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LOUISE BURLEIGH 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT! 



THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 




Photo by Bennet. Courtesy of Vagabono" Players. 
THE PATCHWORK CURTAIN WHICH SUPPORTS THE "VAGABOND" IDEA 
A lovely and simple substitution for a heavy velvet curtain. 



THE 

COMMUNITY THEATRE 

IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 

BY 

LOUISE BURLEIGH 

With Illustrations 




BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1917 



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Copyright, 1917, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 



All rights reserved 
Published, September, 1917 



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Norfoooti ^nss 

Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

Presswork by S. J. Parkhili & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



*G!.A473745 



TO 
CHARLOTTE ELIZA BURLEIGH 

WHOSE GRATEFUL NIECE CAN NEVER SUFFICIENTLY 

THANK HER FOR A LIVING BELIEF 

IN THE 

SPIRIT OF FELLOWSHIP 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Prefatory Letter ix 

Introduction xix 

I The Community 1 

II Sociological Theatre : Playgrounds and 

Pageants 20 

III Sociological Theatre: Caliban . . 34 

IV Little Theatres 54 

V Democratic Institutions 72 

VI A College Theatre .... 84 

VII The World's Example of the Community 

Theatre 95 

VIII What the Theatre Offers . . . 105 

IX How Shall We Organize? . . .117 

X What Can Be Done With Little . . 132 

XI Suggestions 144 

XII The Theatrical Renaissance . . . 158 

Appendix 163 



vu 



PREFATORY LETTER 

Dear Miss Burleigh: 

May I thank you for letting me see the 
proof sheets of your book "The Community 
Theatre"? And may I congratulate you and 
your readers on the fact, rare in this field, that 
this book of yours has been produced by one 
who is a worker both in the theatre and in 
the community; for the fusion of the arts of 
the one with the aspirations of the other is 
the practical ideal of the community theatre. 

Actual experience in both fields should, 

therefore, precede the making of books on this 

most practical subject. "After the practice 

— the theory," as Gordon Craig writes at the 

head of his journal, The Mash. Yet this is 

too seldom the case; for the workers most 

skilled and effectual are nearly always too 

definitely engaged in experiment and creation 

to become commentators on their work; so 

ix 



x PREFATORY LETTER 

that, in this field, the reading public has often 
turned too confidingly to the writings of com- 
mentators untested by sufficient real contact 
with their subject matter. 

Your ardent and broad-spirited w^ork speaks 
for itself. Examining actual conditions, ar- 
tistic and social, it points forward with vision 
— a vision not too far-focussed for present 
needs. In reaction to its message, it is for me 
only to wish your book Godspeed, and to 
touch upon a few aspects of its theme which 
your treatment suggests. 

I do this, may I confess, with the more zeal 
because I find your pages "backing me up" in 
so many vital things which, for a good while, 
my own conviction and experience have brought 
home to me. Many of these I have set forth 
very sketchily in my volume "The Civic 
Theatre", a bird's-eye- view record of work 
and thoughts in overcrowded years, published 
by Mitchell Kennerley in 1912. Again in 
your book there are other vital matters wherein 
I feel perhaps we differ, rather in a stage of 
experience than in the goal to be gained. 

As example of our common ground of agree- 



PREFATORY LETTER xi 

ment, in your Introduction you aptly define 
the Community Theatre as "a house of play 
in which events offer to every member of a 
body politic active participation in a common 
interest." 

In my volume just referred to, I write : 

"A civic theatre is the efficient instrument 
of the recreative art of a community." 

Our definitions, you see, are worded differ- 
ently, but clearly their meaning is the same : 
"the civic theatre" and "the community 
theatre" of our intent are one in idea, but I 
think "community theatre" is the better 
name for the idea. 

In our goal, then, we are agreed. On our 
road there perhaps at times we go by different 
paths. 

In a letter to me, referring to your book, 
you write: "It is my aim to point out that 
we need not wait for a revolution to found a 
theatre which shall belong to the community, 
if we are only willing to examine our communi- 
ties and, as the expression is, 'begin small." 

Now if by that expression "begin small" you 
mean "begin modestly an immense under- 



xii PREFATORY LETTER 

taking", I am sincerely in accord with you. 
But the danger is lest a community, in be- 
ginning their theatre small, should see it small. 

That would be fatal; for from its very be- 
ginnings, however modest, the community 
theatre must be seen large in its far-reaching 
ideal, or it will fail. Its founders, in short, 
must have real vision — the vision to realize 
the deep, revolutionizing forces it sets free, 
in order that they may control and guide them 
to constructive social ends. 

It is from that conviction that I have written 
in a recent essay on "Community Drama" : — 
"In approaching my subject, I can approach 
it in no less a sense than a world sense. . . . 
Community Drama is testable by the most 
modest beginnings; but the scope of its prin- 
ciple is vast — or it is nothing." 

So, though I am heartily with you in your 
high valuation of little theatres as centers of 
community expression, I am none the less sure 
that numbers of such have actually failed of 
their true mission because they have not, 
from the start, been seen large by their founders. 
That is one reason why I believe greatly in the 



PREFATORY LETTER xiii 

value of large-scale community festivals as 
leavening forerunners not only of the right 
launching of little theatres, but of other more 
special group organizations in social art, as in 
community song, the dance, etc. 

Such festivals, in forms of community 
masques, dramas and pageants, awaken 
popular imagination and enlighten public 
opinion by the only successful means ap- 
parently possible — the tests of actual ex- 
perience and participation by representative 
numbers in the cooperative arts involved. 

With such purposes directly in mind, I laid 
out the large-scale plan of the Pageant and 
Masque of Saint Louis and the structural 
form of "Caliban"; and personal observation 
and experience in Saint Louis, New York and 
Boston have borne out by results my belief 
in the efficacy of the means employed. 

To mention but one happy instance, and the 
latest to strengthen my belief : As a result of 
the three weeks' production of "Caliban 35 last 
month at the Harvard Stadium, a permanent 
Caliban Community League of Greater Boston, 
comprising seventeen Caliban Clubs in differ- 



xiv PREFATORY LETTER 

ent sections of the community, has been organ- 
ized "to encourage and foster the community 
ideals exemplified in Caliban by developing 
and practicing community drama, community 
singing and music and other community activi- 
ties in which all citizens may cooperate" — 
the League having a published journal of its 
own, "The Caliban News", and being officered 
by sincere enthusiastic workers in the Masque, 
backed by the loyalty of many hundreds of 
participants. 

One mistake, I think, we who write books 
or prefaces should do our best to avoid : I 
mean the mistake of discussing institutions, 
organizations, classified subjects, as "things in 
themselves" apart from the human persons 
who actually give them form and being. Here, 
for instance, in these remarks of mine and in 
your book, are discussed such classified sub- 
jects as the Community Theatre, the Little 
Theatre, the Masque, the Pageant, the Socio- 
logical Theatre. But, unavoidable as this 
use of terms may be, do these things ever 
exist as separate entities except in books? 
When they are truly significant, are these 



PREFATORY LETTER xv 

organic agencies ever really alive apart from 
their creators? 

Looking back over ten years or more of work 
in this field, the truth is borne in upon me by 
many experiences that the forms of community 
drama, though they involve a vast social co- 
operation, are no exception to the law that art 
forms and their organization are the product 
of personal invention on the part of artists and 
organizers. 

Vast spectacles and dances, in which thou- 
sands participate in color and motion; noble 
compositions, in which many hundreds take 
part through harmonious sound; organiza- 
tions, through which multitudes cooperate 
without friction, unaware of the means of 
their doing so : — all these first took form in 
the imaginations of a very few inventive human 
beings, single or in small groups ; and the suc- 
cess or failure of those spectacles, dances, com- 
positions, organizations, will depend in large 
measure on the technical equipment and fore- 
sight of those human first causes of their being. 

So, to treat of them apart from their human 
causes would be misleading. Little Theatres, 



xvi PREFATORY LETTER 

Community Theatres, Sociological Theatres, 
etc. will depend for their value — not upon 
valuations in theory and classification, but 
upon actually whose theatres they are : who 
conceives them, who organizes them, who 
operates them. 

This is not to minimize the immense value, 
sociologic and artistic, of audiences and their 
influence on dramatic art-forms, justly em- 
phasized in your book; but it is rightly to 
raise to their great value the guiding and 
creative influences of those artists of the 
theatre, always necessarily fev/, whose re- 
sponsive imaginations shape the forms by 
means of which audiences and participants are 
enabled to cooperate in an harmonious whole. 

So in your book, if I may venture the criti- 
cism, in emphasizing truly as you do the un- 
doubted dramatic renaissance in which our 
country is taking part, and even in stressing 
the vital significance of the theatre artist in 
general, I wish that you might have given 
more direct special emphasis to those living 
creative personalities in America — such as 
Robert Edmond Jones, designer, and Arthur 



PREFATORY LETTER xvii 

Farwell, composer — who are helping to shape 
the destiny of the community theatre. 

The social forces evoked by special genius 
in this field are, of course, vaster than any 
individuals involved. How efficient an instru- 
ment of these forces he may become is the 
test of the community artist. So it is that I 
have seen the community drama movement 
in America, by virtue of its own democratic 
might, grow and flourish from almost nothing 
to flowerings of awe-inspiring grandeur; and 
this, with practically no support, in its strug- 
gling stages, from popular journalism; and 
with no comprehending attention or valuation 
accorded to it by those critics and philosophical 
students of our time whom the thinking public 
looks to and counts upon to interpret the vital 
signs and portents of democracy. Neither in 
journals radical, progressive, or conservative, 
appealing to the general public, will you find 
yet any appropriate recognition of the power 
and the beauty of this creative movement : 
neither in "The Masses", nor "The New 
Republic", nor "The Nation." 

Yet happily, though the social critics and 



xviii PREFATORY LETTER 

philosophers might conceivably do much to 
help it, this movement is self-reliant in the 
spirit of its own workers and participants — 
the living spirit of that art which is true de- 
mocracy. And you, Miss Burleigh, who are 
one of those real workers, may take joy — 
through this gallant, interpretive emprise of 
yours — in joining a small band of high- 
hearted pioneers, in whose trail — when it 
becomes well worn — the formal philosophers 
are sure to follow. 

Meanwhile, a happy work-time to you and 

your book ! 

Sincerely yours, 

Percy MacKaye. 

Cornish, N. H. 
7th August, 1917. 



INTRODUCTION 

Of the many changes which the past fifteen 
years have seen in our theatre, undoubtedly 
the most momentous is the abolition of the 
footlights. The importance of their banish- 
ment lies not in the artistic value but rather 
in the spiritual significance of the achievement. 
The footlights were a barrier between the 
actor and the audience. By them the theatre 
was divided into two distinct and separate 
parts, like two countries whose common bound- 
ary is a great river or high mountains. In- 
deed, we spoke of the division as did the ancient 
Romans of the Alps, referring to "beyond the 
footlights" or to "this side of the footlights.' 5 
The removal of the barrier affects not only 
the workers on the stage but those whose task 
is to create from the seats of the auditorium 
— for the need for active cooperation on the 
part of the audience is fast becoming a com- 
monplace — and it is because of this duality 



xx INTRODUCTION 

that the innovation is more important than 
its fellows. 

How different is the New Theatre from that 
of twenty years ago ! On the stage side of the 
footlights there has been created a new being, 
the artist of the theatre. And this artist of the 
theatre, about whom much has been said and 
written, and who is perhaps best compared to 
the leader of an orchestra, has summoned help 
from all the arts to weave a new texture of 
beauty. The architect and the sculptor have 
brought beauty of construction and cleared 
away the clutter of unneeded detail; the 
painter has colored the setting with imagina- 
tion and made meanings where before there 
were ' only haphazard imitations of what we 
see every day; the musician has filled pauses 
with beauty; the dancer and the poet have 
not been neglected; and finally even the 
scientist has been called in to give of his 
knowledge. It is as if the stage had expanded, 
pushing and pushing in growth until it burst 
its restraint ; and, flowing over the footlights, 
it extinguished them as it went, and finally 
reached the audience. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

For the artist of the theatre has always 
understood that all the means at his com- 
mand are but instruments for the service of 
the audience. Without the audience he is 
lost. The movement on the stage, while it is 
the reason for the existence of the spectators, 
cannot escape the domination exercised by 
them. It is the aim of every artist in the 
theatre to unite the spirits of his audience into 
one thought and to express that thought 
through action on his stage. So from the 
beginning of the theatrical renaissance, of 
which we are now a part, stage directors have 
been reaching out over the audience, and in 
order to encourage their spiritual cooperation, 
have often given them an actual physical part 
to play. The prologue once more walks our 
boards. The "Flowery Way" down which 
the actors come to the stage has been set up 
in our western theatre by Professor Reinhardt, 
following the happy custom of Japan. Mr. 
Stuart Walker has personified the listener; in 
one of his plays at least, " You-in-the- Audience" 
not only speaks, but actually wanders up to the 
stage, takes part in the play, and at last solves 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

the quandaries of the characters to every one's 
satisfaction. It seems to me that Mr. Walker, 
who has the instincts of the stage artist so 
highly developed that he is able to turn from 
writing to acting and directing with perfect 
ease, has intuitively hit upon a great truth, 
and has in his character of "You-in-the- 
Audience" made a symbolical forecast of the 
next step in the progress of the theatrical art. 
The artists of the theatre, like the people 
in Mr. Walker's charming play, have done 
their very best. It is time for "You-in-the- 
Audience" to go up and take a hand. 

Now just as it is true that changes have 
swept over the stage in the theatre, is it true 
that something has happened to the audience. 
The architecture of our Theatre proves it. 
The old theatres were made up of tier upon 
tier of boxes and galleries, while some of our 
newer ones have less than three hundred seats. 
When the New Theatre was built in New York, 
its construction followed the old lines, and the 
New Theatre failed with a promptness which 
has been referred to many times by theatrical 
commentators. Undoubtedly there is a pre- 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

dominance of the style of play which demands 
an audience near at hand, but is that very 
predominance not a symptom rather than a 
disease ? The kind of play which has an intel- 
lectual appeal, fundamentally, will not reach a 
large audience; the large audience demands 
great, simple emotions : conversely, the small 
audience demands a limited range of emotions 
and usually will prefer to be stirred through 
the intellect than through the emotions. So the 
Little Theatre in New York, wuth its exquisite 
productions of intellectual delicacies, may be 
thought to limit its audience by the size of its 
auditorium. Or, on the other hand, it may be 
considered to be the answer to a demand made 
by a few : the reply perhaps to the indifference 
of thousands who have gone elsewhere for their 
entertainment and delight. 

For we have in our theatre everything but 
an audience. Small groups of interested spec- 
tators there are, and I am glad to believe that 
the number is increasing. But now T the mass 
of the people, the people with simple emotions 
and simple appreciations, are not in the theatre. 
Where are they? They may be sleeping; 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

they may not know that there is a theatre. 
Miss Jane Addams tells a poignant tale of a 
Greek fruit vender who did not know there 
were Americans who loved the ancient beauty 
of his country. He had brought with him 
mementos of that loveliness, hoping to find 
interest in his new home; but his customers 
refused to be led to speak of Greece's glory, 
and it was only when he happened upon a 
picture of the Acropolis at Hull House that he 
revealed the sketches and drawings he had 
made. No doubt there are people to whom 
the theatre has not shown herself except as the 
home of false values, the exhibition room of 
ugliness and even of vice. How glad those 
people would be to be discovered by the artist 
of the theatre ! 

Others of the audience for which we are 
seeking may be in the motion-picture theatres. 
The architecture once more seems to be a key 
. . . the old theatres have many of them been 
converted into "movie houses" or have been 
replaced by buildings which follow in some 
measure their generous lines. These houses 
are filled not once a day but again and again 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

from morning till night. Much has been wisely 
said and much foolishly upon this matter. 
Authorities differ very widely upon the cause 
for the popularity of the movie; one would 
have us think that it is the new art of democracy 
in its toddling infancy ; another assures us that 
it is popular because it is inexpensive; and a 
third that it is a fad and will soon lose its sup- 
porters. No doubt there is truth in each 
statement ; but this is not the place for a pro- 
longed discussion of the value of the motion 
picture except as it affects the audience of the 
spoken drama. 

When the artist of the theatre looks to the 
motion-picture house for the audience which 
he desires, his first query will be, naturally, 
will the audience come back to the spoken 
drama from the silent one? Yes, a thousand 
times yes. The motion picture may develop 
into many things which it is not in its present 
state, but it will never replace the spoken 
drama. The motion-picture enthusiast does 
not scorn the theatre. Some four years ago 
the present writer was acting in a small, ill- 
trained, and unpretending company whose 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

duty was to fill the gaps in the routine of films 
in a motion-picture theatre. The manage- 
ment boasted that their films were the best in 
the city : the audience paid its ten cents at 
the door and demanded full value for it. The 
hard-working company gave hastily prepared 
but sincere representations of good one-act 
plays. The performance flowed steadily from 
ten in the morning until ten at night, repeat- 
ing itself three times during the day. If we 
accept the theory so often put forward that 
the movie lover loses his interest in the spoken 
drama, we should expect to hear that during 
the playlet the audience became inattentive, 
or perhaps that they left the theatre when it 
was announced. This was not true, in spite 
of the inferior quality of the acting seen in the 
play to that on the screen. (Inferior it un- 
doubtedly was : the film actors were artists 
ranging from John Bunny to Sarah Bernhardt !) 
But, far from leaving the theatre, the audience 
applied continually at the box office for the 
hour of the play in order that they might not 
miss it. The motion picture had not hurt 
the audience for the spoken drama; indeed, I 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

think there had been the creation of an audience 
in that theatre. Nor was its audience in any 
way unique : it was the average motion-picture 
audience. Its attitude, then, may be taken 
as typical of motion-picture audiences, and it 
is safe to assume that they are in general ready 
to be called back into the theatre. They will 
come no doubt with a new taste, but come 
they will. The artist of the theatre will find 
them with lamps trimmed and burning. 

But there are other signs that the audience 
is waiting to be called into the theatre. A 
movement which had fundamentally no con- 
nection with the art of the theatre has brought 
the audience to its doors. This is the move- 
ment of social reorganization led by the social 
scientist. 

The social scientist represents the audi- 
torium as the artist of the theatre does the 
stage; he seeks to awaken his group to con- 
sciousness of self. And after groping here and 
there he has hit upon the value of play, es- 
pecially cooperative play, in his work. And 
play has led him to the arts of the theatre. 

Not long ago in our puritanical order of 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

living, play was despised. Then Froebel dis- 
covered its value as an educative force, and 
when it had won its way so far into our lives, 
it began to be studied for its own sake. The 
history of play is an interesting one which the 
world cannot afford to neglect. It carries with 
it the sanity and joy of living, and because it 
permits the expression of emotions, it leads to 
art, and more than to any art, to the art of the 
theatre. 

The earlier forms of play to which the social 
scientist turned were undeveloped expressions 
of the art of the theatre. The playgrounds 
for children — to be spoken of more fully later 
on — were the first and simplest result. The 
need for play in older children was answered 
by dance halls and clubs, and the development 
assumed the actual outlines of the theatrical 
art in the first dramatic clubs created with a 
social end. From these clubs there have grown 
up a series of small theatres — the most vigor- 
ous assertion by the audience that it wishes to 
come into the theatre. 

But — and this is the most important point 
of all — the audience does not want to come 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

into the theatre to sit inert. To use again 
the phraseology of Mr. Walker's play, "You- 
in-the- Audience" is ready to mount the stage 
and play his part; the artists of the theatre 
have done all they can as yet; the progress 
of the action awaits the worker from the audi- 
torium; and the most vital point becomes the 
method by which the audience shall be taught 
to assume its responsibilities. It seems a some- 
what terrifying fact that the success or failure 
of the theatre must rest with untaught and 
untrained people. Will the art of the theatre 
languish and die? Can the yoke of art be 
made to fit a democracy ? 

Our democracy has begun the solution of 
similar problems. The public schools — im- 
perfect, experimental, everchanging, but under 
State control — are the reply to a demand for 
education : the great library systems which 
we see expanding year by year, are the answer 
to the need for broader culture; certain arts 
— painting and sculpture for example — have 
half-way recognition in museums; and yet 
none of these things, neither education, culture, 
nor the arts of painting and sculpture, have the 



xxx INTRODUCTION 

purely social quality which is inherent in the 
dramatic art. For the theatre cannot exist 
without its audience ... its immediate, liv- 
ing, breathing audience. It is as much a con- 
cern of all the people as the conservation of 
resources, the direction of labor, and the pro- 
motion of agriculture. Shall we then expect 
to find a Commission of the Theatrical Arts at 
Washington ? 

Already certain artists have suggested that 
something of the kind might be possible. The 
government is fast taking over every subject 
which concerns the public good, and making it 
the business of the government to administer 
such matters; why not, then, the question of 
public recreation? 

If we were a bureaucratic state, it would be 
a simple matter to impose a system of state 
theatres. A director is appointed, let us say, 
a chain of theatres is built, and each is put 
into the hands of an expert, who instantly draws 
about him a staff of able workmen — behold 
an efficient machinery for the production of 
Theatrical Art ! And yet what proof have we 
that the audience which stays away from the 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

present commercial theatre would fill the 
vacant seats of one which came as the gift of a 
paternal despotism ? Even if they did come 
for a short time there are many reasons to 
suppose that they would not continue to sup- 
port a theatre so established. A state theatre 
must not be a theatre which is applied to the 
community from without or from above; it 
cannot be the perfected dream of artists; it 
must spring from the dreams and needs of the 
everyday person, the need for expression of a 
whole community. When individual commu- 
nities have felt the need for a group expression 
strongly enough, when each has — imperfect 
and struggling — an organization for the ex- 
pression of community emotion, there will 
come spontaneously from the whole people the 
demand for a central art direction. It will be 
then that the theatrical art will be in flower, 
and until then we must look for groping and 
imperfection. 

In these chapters it is the aim of the author 
to consider the social quality of the dramatic 
art, the emotional needs of an ordinary com- 
munity, and to point out that each may have 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

its greatest opportunity for perfection through 
a theatre based upon those principles upon 
which democratic institutions must be built. 

And, since English is so inaccurate a 
language, and since we are so susceptible to 
catch phrases, it may be well to set down at 
once the meaning of the term "Community 
Theatre " as used in this volume. Later it 
will be necessary to dissect and explain at 
length the derivation of each phrase, but at 
present it will be sufficient to express it as 
clearly as possible in order that no misunder- 
standing may arise. 

The Community Theatre is a house of play in 
which events offer to every member of a body 
politic active participation in a common interest. 

This definition is broad enough to allow great 
latitude in its local application, a very neces- 
sary quality in so varied and heterogeneous a 
state as our own. It can be applied, I believe, 
with no fundamental alteration to large as well 
as to small communities, just as, in spite of 
Plato's assertion that it could not, a democratic 
form of government has been found successful 
in states of over five thousand inhabitants. 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

What growth may come to the community 
theatre as it reaches out and grows under the 
influence of practice it is not possible to imag- 
ine, but we should be indeed visionless if we 
did not believe that its flowering will exceed 
all our hopes. It is this quality which has made 
democratic institutions beloved of poets and 
seers since the day of Pericles in Athens when 
the glimmerings of democratic dawn were first 
visible — this blossoming beyond the belief of 
those who sow the seed. 

And yet, in spite of an apparent looseness in 
the general terms of the definition, precise 
limits have been set for the community theatre 
so defined. In order to see what it may not 
and what it must not do, it will be well to study 
with attention some of the independent, small, 
non-commercial (in the usual sense of Broad- 
way) theatres which have come into being all 
over the country. They offer much that is 
practical and helpful in the organization of the 
community theatre, even while they prove 
that the fact of their origin outside the ranks 
of the theatrical profession is not sufficient to 
endow them with magical virtues. Followers 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION 

of the Little Theatre movement have been too 
eager to accept any independent theatrical 
organization and to assume that everything 
which came from such a source was invariably 
fine. On the other hand, the enemies of the- 
movement have been quick to condemn all 
Little Theatres as the feeble striving of dabblers. 
As is usual, the truth lies somewhere between 
these two extreme views. The Little Theatre 
has made contributions to the art of the theatre 
already, but its greatest gift is the promise 
which it carries, the hope of the theatre as an 
institution of the people. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

For the use of photographs I am indebted 
to Mr. Stuart Walker of the Portmanteau 
Theatre, to the Vagabond Theatre in Balti- 
more, the Forest Theatre of Carmel-by-the- 
Sea, and the Idler Club of Radcliffe College. 

To the officers of these theatres and their 
fellows of the Appendix, I am under obligation 
for continued courtesy. I trust that in some 
slight way the results may prove helpful to that 
enthusiasm of which the Little Theatre is a 
sign. 

Finally, I owe much to my generous friends. 
But especially do I wish to thank Fraulein 
Mayer, Mr. Sheldon Cheney, and Mr. Percy 
MacKaye for the benefit of their experience 
conferred by an unfailing interest. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Patchwork Curtain which Supports the 

"Vagabond" Idea .... Frontispiece* 
A lovely and simple substitution for a heavy velvet 
curtain. 

PACING PAGE 

The Seven Gifts 28 v 

Played in Madison Square, before five thousand peo- 
ple, on Christmas Eve. An excellent example of 
simplicity of line. 

Detail of a Scene from Caliban, by Percy 

MacKaye 36 v 

Setting by Robert Edmond Jones. The use of the 
mask was revived with eminent success. 

An Outdoor Play at Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cali- 
fornia 62 v 

Gammer Gurton's Needle . . . . . .70 

The vigor and vitality of the old comedy emphasized 
by the whimsy of the set. 

National Sylvan Theatre, Washington, D. C. 74^ 

On the grounds of the Washington Monument. 

National Sylvan Theatre, Washington, D. C. 80* 
The auditorium during preparations for a perform- 
ance. 

The Chinese Lantern 138 

Produced by the Idler Club of Radcliffe College, under 
the direction of Mr. Sam Hume. 
xxxvii 



THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

CHAPTER I 

The Community 

Why do we need a Community Theatre? 
Let us, before deciding, look for a moment at 
the modern community. 

The dictionary says that a community is 
"a body politic; any body of persons having 
common interests, privileges, etc. ; a sharing 
or participation." Further, that useful book 
quotes in exposition of the word's use, this 
statement from J. R. Seeley, "Three ties by 
which states are held together are community 
of race, community of religion, and commu- 
nity of interest." Using this definition and 
this quotation as a basis, let us examine com- 
munities as we know them, to discover just 
how closely the meaning of the word may 
be said to apply. 

Modern communities are communities only 

l 



2 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

in the loosest sense in which the word can be 
taken. A city is a great group of people liv- 
ing within certain geographical limits. It is 
to be sure "a body politic 5 ', but it has no 
common interests which weld it into a great 
whole ; except in one case in a thousand there 
is not the least sign of participation in a com- 
mon life. This principle is equally true in the 
small communities, but it is more self-evident 
in a large city. The commercial organization 
of society is based primarily upon competition 
which has resulted in disunion rather than 
cooperation. The effects can be most clearly 
seen in the great centres. 

What homogeneity is there in an American 
city? Every race of the earth goes to make 
up the citizenry. This is no longer true 
merely of eastern cities, it is true of all cities, 
east, west, north, and south. Nor are the 
European and Asiatic newcomers the only 
foreigners; there are as well those hordes of 
country-born and country-bred city-dwellers 
to whom the city always seems strange. Some- 
times the inhabitants of one locality in a city 
have brought with them traditions which they 



THE COMMUNITY 3 

hold in common, but they are the traditions of 
another place and of an older race than the 
city in which they live. So we find a Ghetto, 
an Italian quarter, a German colony, and a 
French settlement, each preserving the mem- 
ory of home perhaps, but entering into the life 
of the American city of which it is a part, 
without organization, without any definite and 
common ground except the struggle for exist- 
ence. 

Yet all our cities have made partial attempts 
to find some sort of common ground for their 
inhabitants. The working people have or- 
ganized themselves into unions of the various 
trades, feeling for fellowship as well as for 
financial gain. But unions are limited, and 
they include few of the people in a great city, 
even when they are bound one to the other in 
a kind of Super-Union. They do not supply 
the need for an amalgamating force, but 
rather they tend, like everything else in a great 
commercial centre, to emphasize the difference 
between one class of citizens and another. 

To be sure, in cities everywhere a system of 
organized play has grown up, there are munici- 



4 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

pal entertainments, municipal baths, and parks 
which are certainly for all the population. 
Notwithstanding, such provisions made by 
the city are regarded not as a privilege, but 
rather as a last resort; we do not find all 
New York splashing happily in the Public 
Baths ! Every class of citizen may be seen 
in Central Park, to be sure; artists paint 
it, leaders of society gallop along the bridle 
paths, children of the very rich feed the swans, 
and tattered little boys play at hide and seek 
in the shade of the trees ; but in all this there 
is nothing which draws these individuals closer 
together. There is nothing beyond what lies 
in the common possession of paved streets 
and a water supply. Taxes pay for the smooth- 
ness of the lawns, everything is impersonal, 
removed from actual experience. It must of 
necessity be so, but think what a difference 
could be made if the millionaire whose motor 
slips daily along those level drives and the 
lounger who eats his dry roll on the green 
carpet were personally responsible for the care 
and the beauty of that park; if, for example, 
each threw off his coat and bent his back to a 



THE COMMUNITY 5 

lawn mower, one day in the year, by the side 
of the other ! Would the great park be then a 
mere physical accident, a geographical bond? 
But beyond the impersonal quality of public 
possessions, all those of the city have tended, 
because of our capitalistic and commercial 
organization of the state, to separate individ- 
uals into classes rather than to unite all classes 
into a unified community. Parks, libraries 
and even the public schools have been looked 
upon as a beneficence, almost as a charity, 
provided for the poor by taxing the rich. The 
children of well-to-do parents and of the 
professional classes are sent to private schools, 
they play in the parks under the eyes of nurses, 
and when they grow old enough to use the 
library, there is little in the quiet of the great 
reading room to inspire the feeling that every 
reader is a fellow citizen, sharing the store of 
knowledge for which the library stands, striving 
for the same ideals, and equally responsible for 
the beauty of a common life. It is natural 
that cities built upon a basis of commercial 
enterprise should emphasize differences in 
wealth as they grow ; the accident of locality, 



6 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

— rich and poor do not live side by side, — 
such everyday matters as means of transporta- 
tion, places and manner of worship, the devices 
employed for entertainment, all tend to widen 
the breach. 

For example, take religion. What com- 
munity can be united in a common religion? 
Toleration in religious belief is perhaps more 
fundamental than any other tenet in the 
creed of our democracy : not only in cities but 
everywhere. In the smallest settlements spire 
strives against spire to attest the liberty we 
suffer in the worship of God. Great cities 
harbor strange beliefs, old and new, un- 
prosecuted. But even the followers of a 
single creed are not necessarily united. This 
is true primarily in cities where the ritual of 
worship varies less widely than the ritual of 
social life. It is a tragic reality that the 
union achieved when men kneel side by side 
in prayer is more than offset by the fact that 
the one walks home to cabbage with boiled 
beef while the other is borne in a liveried car- 
riage to the fastidious ceremony of course upon 
course. Moreover, in cities the poor man and 



THE COMMUNITY 7 

the rich one do not worship side by side. 
Fashionable churches support missions which 
share their creeds and even their management, 
but which prevent actual contact between those 
who should be neighbors. Once more the 
simple accident of geography has made a high 
barrier. 

Common ancestors have vanished. A 
common worship no longer exists. There 
remains only the "community of interest" 
of which Mr. Seeley speaks. Clearly our 
cities have none. Now and then, temporarily, 
a sporadic interest arises strong enough to 
reach all the inhabitants : there is need for a 
drainage system; or, some keen demand of 
the schools, some widespread lack in public 
works, which molds the citizens into a single- 
minded body. But when the end is achieved, 
there is certain to be a lapse into the old dis- 
organization. 

The most evident needs in our modern life 
are those which spring from great disasters. 
For example, in Salem, Massachusetts, there 
was a great and terrible fire, destroying life 
and property and calling out the most simple 



8 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

and most human qualities and emotions. Re- 
sponse was instant. Life grew simple in a 
moment, and, overnight, strangers were con- 
verted into neighbors. And as long as the 
emotion lasted, the cooperation held them to- 
gether; then life settled once more into its 
normal rut. So too, on the dock of a great 
steamship line, a group of strangers gathered 
to say bon voyage to those who were sailing to 
the danger zone : before the gangplank was up 
there was a fellowship among them, and when 
the last sight of the boat had failed, they walked 
quietly away, chatting together like friends. 
One after another we have seen the countries 
of the world welded into units by the horrible 
blast of war, by the influence of a great idea 
clothed in terms of human emotion. Is it 
not possible to apply the lesson which it 
teaches to peace, to our lives as we live them, 
day by day ? 

It is more than possible — it is being done. 
Organizations for peace are becoming more 
and more popular : the Red Cross, which 
originated in war, has carried its usefulness 
over into the fighting of accidents and calami- 



THE COMMUNITY 9 

ties of peace, the Boy Scouts are organized 
primarily for everyday life, and here and there 
all over the country, pageants and masques have 
been springing up to rouse civic interest and 
civilian pride. 

The case of the city of St. Louis, although 
most often cited, is perhaps more conclusive 
than any other. Civic reform is valuable only 
when it is permanent, and it will not be perma- 
nent if it is not the work of all the citizens. 
The few in St. Louis who felt the need of a new 
charter and of the completion of a great munici- 
pal bridge, knew that these things must be 
the work not of the few, but of the entire 
citizenry. And with an insight which bespeaks 
great things for our future as an artistic unity 
and as a unified nation, they turned to the arts 
of the theatre to accomplish the persuasion of 
the citizens. The result was the achievement 
for which they were seeking — the new charter 
was made and the bridge was built — more- 
over, there is the promise of more permanent 
union in artistic causes in St. Louis. 

But the organization of a complex and 
diffuse group like the city is naturally more 



10 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

difficult than that of a smaller one. So the 
Masque of Caliban, produced in celebration 
of the Shakespeare Tercentenary, was less 
visibly successful than the Masque of St. Louis ; 
and just so the smaller and more intimate 
attempts in villages have been more imme- 
diately effective. However, the need for a 
unifying force is none the less present in the 
small than in the large community : there is 
perhaps a more crying demand for a common 
interest in small isolated villages than in the 
great cities. 

It used to be true of American villages that 
they were somewhat held together by ties of 
race. Now most villages fall into two classes, 
those which have not been reinforced from the 
new material, and those which have more new 
blood than they have assimilated. Every 
frequenter of the backwater of New England 
is familiar with the tragedy of the town where 
intermarriage has been the rule for four or five 
consecutive generations, and from which the 
youth and the rugged strength has been 
sapped by emigration with no renewal from 
outside. Such towns usually have an appalling 



THE COMMUNITY 11 

percentage of degenerates and invalids, and in 
such towns there is practically no industry; 
the people make a living — meagre as it is — 
and ask for nothing more. There is no joy, 
no vitality, no life in the real sense. Social 
life is a set of conventions, religion is the 
following of a dogma; men breed and feed 
and die. Vice in the most dreadful forms exists 
in these villages, hand-in-hand with disease of 
body and mind. When the outside world 
comes to visit them it brings more of a curse 
than a blessing, for it usually comes seeking 
pleasure, and the natives find the most super- 
ficial and unfortunate characteristics supreme 
in the advent of "summer people." What- 
ever rural simplicity may have existed is de- 
stroyed by the intrusion of a sophisticated 
point of view, and the fraction of the country 
folk who do not emulate the newcomer, gen- 
erally join forces against him. 

In the little village of X there is one 

long main street upon which most of the four 
hundred inhabitants live. Not far away there 
is a summer colony centred round an hotel, and 
scattered through the town are houses which 



12 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

are closed In winter, but which are still con- 
sidered an integral part of the village. The 
owner of such a house, Mrs. Norman, whose 
years of good citizenship had endeared her to 
the community, met in a distant city a village 
woman, Mrs. Prince. They chatted long about 
the distant little town : Mrs. Prince had much 
to tell of what had happened on the quiet 
street. In leaving Mrs. Norman remembered 
to send a message to a neighbor, the friend of 
years, whose unobtrusive cottage lay between 
her own large house and that of Mrs. Prince. 
Mrs. Prince hesitated. "But I shall probably 
not see her before you do," she said. "Of 
course, one can not know every one, even in 

x — r 

Clearly there is need for some force which 
shall offset so false a social standard, and for 
this force it is hopeless to look to the Church. 
Once more the toleration which is our pride 
serves to divide rather than to weld the factors. 
In most villages of such a type there are too 
many churches — half filled and sleepy. The 
unfortunate preacher is unable to do anything 
for his parish; often he wishes to unite with 



THE COMMUNITY 13 

some other church and is prevented by tradi- 
tion, and the most he can do is to struggle 
along cheerfully, underpaid and overworked. 
The younger people find the church stupid; 
there is no new life in it. They have deserted 
the puritanical standards of their fathers, and 
they want to dance, to sing, to enjoy life ; but 
such matters are not considered the problems 
for which the Church exists, and so the young 
people gather at the corner drug store instead 
of in the church. 

In other settlements a new problem is in- 
troduced by an influx of Roman Catholic 
peoples. These are the towns which have 
industries, factories, and mills to which newly- 
made Americans are carried by their employ- 
ment. And where lately was a quiet town 
with traditions of the Anglo-Saxon race, with 
a population largely "American-born ", there 
is suddenly a flood of broken English and the 
chatter of strange tongues ; a new town springs 
up within the old one yet apart from it. Once 
more the problem is one of amalgamation. 
How shall the strange elements be mingled 
and made one ? Not through race, not through 



14 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

religion, but through some institution which 
shall offer a common interest — an interest 
which shall include all the varieties and which 
shall by that very inclusion teach the one to 
understand the other. 

The diversity of race which is after all the 
most outstanding fact of our population is 
considered by many people a cause for agita- 
tion. From time to time staggering statistics 
are published, and intelligent people read them 
with anxious expressions. At all times and in 
all places, "peril" and "menace" are spoken 
as synonyms for immigration. It is said that 
the newcomers from Southern Europe are espe- 
cially dangerous to our democracy — and yet, 
democracy was first dreamed of in Greece, 
and Rome built the first republic. 

Those who have been privileged to know 
intimately certain of our "foreign" population 
feel quite at ease as to the outcome . . . if 
we can make use of the good impulses before the 
bad ones have been fostered by those who would 
twist them to evil ends. They are so eager to 
be Americans, so ready to believe all that 
is fine of their new country. There is not 



THE COMMUNITY 15 

the least hesitation in their minds as to 
their nationality, even before the intricacies 
of the English language are wholly under- 
stood. It would be possible to multiply 
examples to prove this, but one story will be 
sufficient. 

In a little New Hampshire village settled 
long ago by straight-laced Protestants, a tiny 
wooden Roman Catholic Church has been built, 
in which the good Father every Sunday says 
Mass, preaching not only in English, but in 
French as well, for those of his flock who have 
not yet picked up the strange tongue. The faces 
of the congregation are laughing Celtic faces, 
some Irish and some French : there is not one 
Anglo-Saxon among them all. Across the way, 
however, descendants of the early settlers still 
gather in the half vacant and wholly uncomfort- 
able pews of the neat white Congregational 
Church. They speak with no little scorn of their 
neighbors, usually calling them, "them cath'lic 
furreners." 

But one summer day when the warm air 
inspired dullness and drowsiness, the priest 
made an appeal to his people which rang so 



16 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

clearly even in his broken English that it could 
be heard across the silent village street in the 
calm of the long prayer. The collection for 
the day was to be used to heat the church in 
winter ; it was necessary that the imaginations 
of his flock be roused. He expostulated and 
besought them, drawing a vivid picture of the 
shivering during Christmas Mass, and finally 
— not without a perceptible twinkle of amuse- 
ment — he said that he should descend from 
the chancel and pass the plate in person. It 
was here that his voice grew tense with indigna- 
tion at the thought of the comparison which 
he was about to make. "I must take the 
collection l" he cried. "There are some people 
who will not give until the collection is made 
by the priest . . . and there are people who 
give one penny Sunday after Sunday . . . 
who give to the Church of God what they would 
throw to a monkey sitting on the shoulder of a 
foreigner with a hand organ!" And his voice 
had the same note of pride which might have 
been heard across the way among the first 
families ! 

And that "foreigner" with the monkey — 



THE COMMUNITY 17 

what was he in his own thought? Not a 
foreigner, not an Italian; no, he like the 
others, was an American. And so through all 
the diversity of race there is in our State a bond 
which is stronger and finer than any mere 
physical tie could ever be — the spiritual 
community of ideals to which Mr. Wilson 
gave voice in a speech to new citizens in 
Philadelphia on the tenth of May, 1915. I 
can do no better than to set down in Mr. 
Wilson's own words the expression of those 
ideals : 

You who have just sworn allegiance to this 
great government were drawn across the ocean 
by some beckoning finger, by some belief, by 
some vision of a new kind of justice, by some 
expectation of a better kind of life. 

No doubt you have been disappointed in 
some of us, and some of us are very disappoint- 
ing. No doubt what you found here did not 
seem touched for you, after all, with the com- 
plete beauty of the ideal which you had con- 
ceived beforehand; but remember this, if we 
have grown at all poor at the ideal, you have 
brought some of it with you. A man does not 
go to seek the thing that is not in him. A 
man does not hope for the thing that he does 
not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten 
what America believed in, you, at any rate, 



18 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

imported in your own hearts a renewal of the 
belief. 

That is the reason why I for one, make you 
welcome. If I have forgotten in any degree 
what America was intended for, I will thank 
God if you remind me. I was born in America. 
You dreamed dreams of what America was to 
be, and I hope you brought the dreams with 
you. No man who does not rightly see visions 
will ever realize any high hope or undertake 
any high enterprise, and just because you 
brought the dreams with you, America is 
more likely to realize the dreams such as you 
brought. 

So if you come into this great nation, you 
will have to come voluntarily, seeking some- 
thing which we have to give. All that we have 
to give is this : we cannot exempt you from 
work. We cannot exempt you from strife, 
the heart-breaking burden of the struggle of 
the day that has come to mankind everywhere. 
We cannot exempt you from the loads that you 
must carry : we can only make them light by 
the spirit in which they are carried, because 
it is the spirit of hope, it is the spirit of liberty, 
it is the spirit of justice. 

Our State, even in its small communities, 
cannot be held together by race nor by religion. 
For a unifying force we must find a living ex- 
pression of a great common ideal : we must 
depend upon a community of interest : we 



THE COMMUNITY 19 

must find an institution in which great and 
small can find expression. The art of the 
theatre, or more precisely, the allied arts of 
the theatre, are utterly calculated to perform 
this service. 



CHAPTER II 

Sociological Theatre: Playgrounds and 
Pageants 

A solemn small boy bent double over a 
sand pile is not an unusual sight. Drawing 
deep breaths in his concentration, he remains 
absorbed until the task which he has set for 
himself is completed. Then, with a glance of 
triumphant pride, he is likely to turn to the 
nearest bystander with some such brevity as 
"See!" 

It used to be only on beaches at the seashore 
and in back yards that we came upon children 
thus, but now even in the most crowded parts 
of our precipitate cities, there are scattered 
groups, the nucleus of a giant organism, the 
germ of the recreation centre. And the flat, 
insignificant sand bin traces its growth back 
through a numerous, distinguished ancestry. 
In its extraordinary pedigree are names which 

20 



PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 21 

seem to have little in common with an un- 
assuming heap of sand. Plato, Kant, Hegel, 
Schiller, Froebel, Groos, and James are there, 
with Stanley Hall, Judge Lindsey, and Joseph 
Lee. The thought of generations conceived, 
and the practical, present-day energy gave 
birth to it. But it does not rest on the glory 
of its family tree : it is not only a descendant 
of illustrious persons. The sand pile is already 
an ancestor : it has given us the recreation 
centre, the city playground. And from the 
playground other great gifts are coming. 

"See," demands the small sand digger, and 
holds up a box cover mounded with the shining 
grains. What do we see? Not a mud pie: 
this is rather a doorway opened into the long 
corridors of man's most ancient instincts. 
Here is the culmination of the universal im- 
pulse to play, the psychological analysis of 
that impulse, and its relation to the history 
of mankind's progress. 

From antiquity there has been discussion of 
the values of play. But with the new science 
of psychology came a discovery which gave it 
a fresh importance, that is, that play is not 



22 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

only useful but actually necessary to human 
life. The study of play and its subdivision 
into categories is complex and often confusing : 
it is sufficient to say that we have seen it proved 
how play, directed, becomes education. 

This great contribution to our constructive 
philosophy came from Germany, and is amaz- 
ingly modern. Froebel, to whom we turn for a 
crystallization of the ideas most fundamental 
in child psychology, assures us that education 
must be through self-activity. The child, 
playing, molds himself into a man. By 
struggling with the gesture, he learns the 
meaning. So the kindergarten, out-of-doors, 
with its gartener to lead and direct the chil- 
dren's happy occupation, may well be called 
the first playground. 

But when we turn to those centres of city 
recreation which are given the name in America, 
we find the earliest attempts coming from iso- 
lated benevolent social organizations. The 
first playgrounds were in Boston, but sponta- 
neous growths having no apparent connection 
with them followed in New York and in other 
cities. In the year 1906, the Playground 



PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 23 

Association of America was organized, although 
at that time there were only twenty cities in 
which playgrounds were being kept alive. The 
number has grown by leaps and bounds, the 
activities have increased and multiplied : no 
longer a group of sand piles in a vacant lot 
constitutes all that is necessary; there is 
complex apparatus and a trained corps of 
directors. And from the impulse of scattered 
individuals, it has become a movement of 
municipalities. 

The primary function of the playground was 
to give space and opportunity for children to 
satisfy their natural and necessary impulse 
to play. Sand boxes, with other equipment 
— swings, slides, and seesaws — were erected 
in a vacant lot, and the playground pronounced 
ready for use. But the friction which always 
results from human relations was not lacking 
in this case : trouble followed the gathering 
of so many and so varied children in one small 
spot : the need for a director was immediately 
apparent. Moreover, if the play was to educate 
as well as to occupy, it must be led into the 
proper channels. For that play which has the 



24 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

highest value for the molding of the man is 
not the individual play in a sand pile, but the 
cooperative play of group games. 

So the playground has satisfied first the desire 
to retrace in each individual the history of the 
mysterious race of mankind ; the little . child 
swings high and low with an exultation which 
he does not ask to understand, and dabbles 
in warm or moist sand, renewing some ancient 
emotional memory. Then he grows older. He 
comes to be aware of the existence of his fellows, 
he is taught loyalty and team play, the value 
of sacrifice to the whole, of which he is a part. 
Friendship and loyalty, obedience to rules, 
and the qualities of leadership are thus 
developed. The intellect enters the play- 
ground, whereupon play touches aesthetics, 
and a new element is introduced. 

It was not long after the founding of the first 
playgrounds that the builders thought it wise 
to make them as agreeable to the eye as 
possible. It may have been that the folk dances 
were made part of the programme for the 
sake of the girls, but it seems more likely 
that they developed naturally from singing 



PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 25 

and dancing games, dear to childhood since the 
beginning of time. Rhythm is an important 
factor in play. "Dressing-up", even in a 
kerchief and apron, is fun. The dance can be 
exhibited to parents at the end of the season, 
reacting pleasantly on the life of the play- 
ground, as we]] as on the child, by linking it 
with the home interests. Dances are at first 
isolated ; then they are strung together in groups, 
in order that they may have coherence for their 
final performance. Have we not thus prepared 
the way for the more complex arts of the 
theatre ? 

The playground originated for the purpose 
of furthering physical health; but not long 
after it was discovered that physical and 
mental well-being cannot be separated. From 
disorganized material, the iron swings made of 
gas-pipe and a teeter with one vacant end high 
in the air, there has been a steady growth to 
the May party whose chanting chorus merrily 
salutes a flower-bedecked and laughing queen. 
The child who spent his playtime in the sand 
heap comes again to the playground for diver- 
sion when he is older : unconsciously he slips 



26 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

from one stage of development to another; 
when he outgrows the isolated digging in the 
sand he joins group games, he becomes — as 
Mr. Joseph Lee phrases it — "an Injun" 
following the leader of the team; he submits 
to discipline until he is a trained member of 
the playground community. Upon reaching 
this more purely mental point, he realizes 
that he is no longer a child but that under the 
veil of a cultivated taste has retained all the 
child's desire to play. He wishes an in- 
tellectual and emotional outlet in his playtime, 
a demand which has been answered in many 
playgrounds over the country by the establish- 
ment of an annual pageant in which old and 
young take part. 

The pageant is the most flexible form of 
dramatic expression. It is a loose-jointed 
member of the Theatre Family, and an adept 
at contortions. Since Mr. Louis Parker's re- 
vival of the form in England, it has been 
customary to make the pageant round the 
history of some locality, conferring a measure 
of coherence upon the whole by devices like 
the chorus of monks who chanted at intervals 



PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 27 

during the Pageant of Saint Albans. It will 
be understood that this flexible formula bends 
comfortably to the needs of the playground 
director. Holidays local or national may be 
made memorable by its adoption : Indepen- 
dence Day or the birthday of Daniel Boone 
may be made real to the children. High 
lights appear upon the solid color of the rou- 
tine; children and parents are interested; the 
whole is knit together into a new vitality. 

Apart from the playground, the pageant has 
had a great development in America, but 
before tracing that growth in any detail, let 
us look at certain other indications of the same 
spirit. There are village celebrations on the 
Fourth of July, with a common set of fireworks 
and diversions. I have heard a whole village 
sing familiar hymns in the town hall on a 
summer Sunday in a little Maine town : I 
have joined the crowd round Mr. Harry Barn- 
hardt and lifted my voice with the others who 
a moment before were, like me, mere passers- 
by. During the last decade many towns have 
adopted the practice of lighting a Christmas 
tree out of doors in some conspicuous place. 



28 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

No one who has wandered up Beacon Hill 
from the crowded Church of the Advent, to 
listen again to the clear voices of the carollers 
outside Saint Margaret's, will ever forget the 
joy of the soft snow under his feet, and the 
tingle of the Christmas air. The illuminated 
windows of every house on the hill are a spoken 
welcome. And when, after lustily singing on 
the Common round the blazing tree, the friendly 
crowd pauses to hear trumpeters announcing 
Christmas Day from the porch of Saint Paul's 
Cathedral, the feeling of community enjoy- 
ment is complete. In New York, the Christmas 
tree in Madison Square was accompanied, in 
1915, by the performance of a Christmas 
pantomime (of which pictures are given in 
these pages) by Mr. Stewart Walker's Port- 
manteau Theatre, erected there for that pur- 
pose. The five thousand spectators stood as 
entranced in the snow as if they had been sitting 
in the luxury of an enticing Little Theatre ! 

But because of its peculiarly adaptable 
nature, the pageant has manifested more than 
any other phenomena the desire of the com- 
munity for unity and expression. Pageants 



PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 29 

have existed always : to discover the first we 
must pass into the time when history was un- 
recorded. Any event presented an excuse. 
During the Middle Ages, these spectacles be- 
came elaborate and usual. The entry of 
royalty into a city, a birth, a christening, a 
betrothal or marriage, the return of a vic- 
torious army, or the birthday of a favorite, 
might be celebrated by the disporting of the 
populace. In the history of France and of 
England the outlines of many colorful pageants 
are preserved, with plates representing the 
richness of the costumes and elaborate de- 
scriptions of the gorgeous trappings. The 
whole city, young, old, tradespeople, nobles, 
and paupers, joined in these revels : the aim 
was to let every one share the common emotion. 
Nor is the aim of the modern pageant differ- 
ent, but it has added a corollary : the new 
pageant strives to unite the body politic by 
means of the celebration of its general joy. 
The Master of the Revels, the Lord of Misrule, 
has been superseded by a new master, who with 
the functions of his forerunner has combined 
the ambition of the statesman. His pageant 



30 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

celebrates a day of public rejoicing, fitly and 
beautifully, but at the same time it must quicken 
the community consciousness, it must revive 
fellowship and the common ambitions of the 
component parts. 

The history of the pageant as an art form in 
America actually goes back to the beginnings 
of the oldest colony : the Merry Mount Revels 
appeared in 1627. But although there were 
sporadic instances during the first two hundred 
years of our growth (in the Revolutionary War 
British soldiers gave a pageant in Philadelphia), 
the first use of the name, and the earliest cele- 
bration in the form by which we characterize 
our pageants was in Marietta, Ohio. In 1888 
this romantic town was the scene of a pageant, 
actually called by the name, in which incidents 
from its own vivid history were represented. 
However, the development of the pageant did 
not steadily follow the initiative of Marietta. 
It was not until after Mr. Parker's brilliant 
successes in England — Sherborne, Winchester, 
Oxford, and Bury St. Edmunds — that the 
enthusiasm on this side of the Atlantic was 
strong enough to make pageants numerous. 



PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 31 

As the number of pageants increased in our 
cities, the form became in a measure localized. 
The pageants of the revival of pageantry, set 
in motion when Mr. Parker in England created 
the Pageant of Sherborne, were, as I have said, 
loosely connected series of historical scenes. 
There was usually some allegorical symbolical 
figure or chorus by which they were joined, but 
this device had little value in itself. When, 
on the other hand, pageantry became a 
frequent adventure of the American people, 
the symbolical element was magnified. In 
Mr. Parker's pageants there is a glorification 
of the past : in Mr. MacKaye's pageant- 
masque there is a promise for the future through 
the reviewing of the past. No doubt the 
Puritan blood which flows so strongly in the 
veins of America has some part in this ten- 
dency : it may also be caused by the fact that 
we are accustomed to think of ourselves as a 
nation with a future rather than a past ; but 
the desire of the makers of the new pageant 
to knit the community into a better whole by 
means of it is also a fundamental reason. 
Whatever causes and forces have contributed 



32 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

to this result, the symbolical character of the 
American pageant is its most vital factor, 
and from the symbolical pageant we have 
developed a new form, the pageant-masque. 

From the year 1911, the list of pageants 
grows increasingly varied; large and small 
towns vie for first place in enthusiasm; towns 
and cities represented spread from California 
to Massachusetts : no occasion seems to be 
neglected. The Peterborough Pageant in 
memory of Edward MacDowell, the Glouces- 
ter Pageant, the Pageant of Wisconsin, the 
Pageant of the Northwest — one treads upon 
the heels of the other. But the Municipal 
Pageant of St. Louis in 1914 has in a measure 
established a valuable precedent, because its 
proportions were so huge and impressive. 

The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis has 
been published, but to the student of the 
sociological theatre the report of committees 
compiled after the production is even more 
interesting. This brief pamphlet is a paean of 
praise. To read it is like listening to festival 
music; voice follows voice in lifting strain 
after strain of joy, and the solos are supported 



PLAYGROUNDS AND PAGEANTS 33 

by a chorus of thousands — the citizens who 
made the celebration a success. The bare 
statement of work accomplished is a revelation 
of what demands the venture made : no 
channel of usefulness was left untapped : every 
thread of service was gladly woven into the 
web. But behind the setting down of facts 
there is the same spirit in the reports made by 
those committee chairmen that was clear in 
the reading of the masque and the pageant — 
the spirit of service, the spirit of fellowship, 
the spirit of brotherhood. 

Other cities have accepted the challenge of 
St. Louis ; last season New York, and Newark, 
New Jersey, made use of the community 
pageant and masque. Already the banner is 
going forward. The spirit of neighborliness 
which gathered city children into playgrounds 
has flourished there, and the breath of brother- 
hood is blowing across the land. 



CHAPTER III 

Sociological Theatre : Caliban 

Caliban by the Yellow Sands, Mr. MacKaye's 
masque in honor of the three hundredth anni- 
versary of the death of William Shakespeare, 
was presented in the City of New York in 1916. 
It was far more ambitious than any previous 
civic attempt, for New York is of all cities the 
most complex, the most varied in population, 
the most volatile : to unite her shifting thou- 
sands into even a momentary unity seems 
beyond belief or imagination. But the in- 
troduction of the new art form to the great city 
was a strategical masterstroke. In this coun- 
try no work of art may hope for acceptance as 
long as it lacks the stamp of metropolitan 
genuineness. If New York has seen it, the 
others will see it. Had New York withheld 
her attention, no heights of technical finesse 
could have made up for the loss. Therefore 

34 



CALIBAN 35 

it demands especial attention in the steady 
advance of the community theatre. 

But Caliban has other claims to importance 
beside the accident that New York witnessed 
its birth : Caliban is interesting in itself, as 
an exponent of the new form of dramatic ex- 
pression which Democracy is hewing from the 
rock of her people. This form is in its infancy. 
We cannot say to what lengths the pageant- 
masque may go. Caliban was groping. In the 
art of the theatre a new technique of expression 
cannot be molded behind the curtains and 
flashed upon the stage fully finished : to do 
this would be to reckon without the audience. 
The artists of the theatre must submit their 
" rough drafts" to the good will of the audience, 
must watch the feelings of the audience with 
beating heart, and must remodel until the 
summit of perfection is reached. 

The great size of the Shakespeare masque 
(its popular name) makes it unusually valuable 
as an example; every proportion is magnified, 
and its beauties and blemishes alike are more 
clearly revealed. 

New York flung herself with an enthusiasm 



36 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

amounting almost to passion into the celebrat- 
ing of Shakespeare's anniversary. The idea 
arose from the annual meeting of the Drama 
League of America, and the local centre of the 
Drama League in New York was responsible 
for the appointment of a committee to manage 
the celebration in that city. With the assist- 
ance of prominent people (his Honor the Mayor 
made it official), a great campaign was started 
to have the three hundredth year since Shake- 
speare's death memorable for proofs of the 
vitality of his work. His deathlessness was 
to be attested by great and small, professional 
and amateur productions of his plays; dis- 
cussions of every question connected with his 
life and writing were to be encouraged; the 
series of lectures and readings were endless. 
Finally, as a climax, a great out-of-door festival 
was to be given, celebrating in as fit a fashion 
as possible the debt which we owe through 
life and art to the master-dramatist. 

It was an amazing conception. And the 
complexity of the committee's organization 
is staggering. It far outreaches the work of 
that triumphant pageant committee in St. 




.s 



25 



2 






-3 

a 



-3 



•8 

-2 



05 



CALIBAN 37 

Louis. Public schools, private schools, 
churches, recreation centres, parks, colleges, 
clubs, libraries, and the profession of the 
theatre were enlisted. The limits to which 
cooperation can be carried seem to have been 
reached when we hear of the sick children in 
Bellevue Hospital learning Ariel's song from 
the Tempest, and sitting propped against pillows 
in their little beds to sew a pasted Shakespeare 
picture book ! 

The final celebration, the culmination of all 
these thousands of minor festivities, was to be 
one which united all the arts of the theatre, 
and it was with this aim in view that Mr. Mac- 
Kaye wrote Caliban for the occasion. In order 
to understand wherein the masque fell below 
and wherein it far surpassed the hopes of its 
originators, let us look for a moment at the 
outline as it was published in the official pro- 
gramme. 

Description of the Masque 

ACTION 

The action takes place, symbolically, on 
three planes : 



38 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

[1] In the cave of Setebos [before and after 
its transformation into the theatre of Pros- 
peroj ; 

[2] In the mind of Prospero [behind the 
Cloudy Curtains of the Inner Stage] ; and 

[3J On the ground-circle of "the Yellow 
Sands" [the place of historic time]. 

TIME 

The Masque Proper is concerned, symboli- 
cally, with no definite period of time, but with 
the waxing and waning of the life of Dramatic 
Art from primitive barbaric times to the verge 
of the living present. 

The interludes are concerned with ritualistic 
glimpses of the art of the theatre during three 
historical periods : [1] Antiquity, [2] the Middle 
Ages, and [3] Elizabethan England. 

The Epilogue is concerned with the creative 
forces of dramatic art from antiquity to the 
present, and — by suggestion — with the 
future of those forces. 

SETTING 

The setting of the Masque is not a back- 
ground of natural landscape as in the case of 
most outdoor pageants, but is architectural 
and scenic. Being constructed technically for 
performance on a large scale, by night only, 
its basic appeals are to the eye, through expert 
illusions of light and darkness, architectural 
and plastic line, the dance, color, and pageantry 



CALIBAN 39 

of group movements; to the ear, through in- 
visible choirs, orchestral and instrumental 
music. 

The Masque Proper is enacted by profes- 
sional actors, who, by their speech, give the 
motives of the large scale pantomime in the 
Interludes. 

The Interludes unfold the theme in dances, 
pageantry, choruses and pantomime, by hun- 
dreds of community performers. In the 
Epilogue the professional actors and the 
numerous community performers unite. 

Corresponding to this Inner Structure is 
the Outer Structure, which consists of three 
stages : 

[1] A modified form of Elizabethan stage, 
here called the Middle Stage, which is a raised 
platform, and to which steps lead from the 
Ground Circle. 

[2] The Inner Stage, shut off from the 
Middle Stage by Cloudy Curtains, which, 
when drawn, reveal the Inner Shakespearean 
Scenes conceived in the mind of Prospero. 

[3] The Ground Circle, between the Middle 
Stage and the Audience, resembling in form the 
"Orchestra" of a Greek theatre. 

Beneath the Middle Stage, and between the 
Steps which lead up to it from the Ground 
Circle, is situated, at centre, the mouth of 
Caliban's cell, which thus opens directly upon 
the Yellow Sands. 

All of these features of the setting, however, 
are invisible when the Masque begins, and are 



40 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

only revealed as the lightings of the action 
disclose them. 

Synopsis of Masque 

GENERAL THEME 

The four principal characters of the Masque, 
Caliban, Ariel, Miranda, and Prospero, are 
derived from those of Shakespeare's play "The 
Tempest." Through these characters the 
general theme is developed. 

The theme of the Masque is the slow edu- 
cation of mankind through the influences of 
cooperative art, that is, of the theatre in its 
full social scope. 

This theme of cooperation is expressed 
earliest in the Masque through the lyric of 
Ariel's spirits, 

"Come unto these Yellow Sands 
And then take hands." 

It is sounded with central stress, in the 
chorus of peace, when the Kings clasp hands 
on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and with 
final emphasis in the gathering together of the 
creative forces of dramatic art in the Epilogue 
and the final speech of Caliban to the spirit 
of Shakespeare. 

Space in which to trace the many incidents 
of the action fails in so brief a review; the 
reader who wishes to follow the education of 



CALIBAN 41 

the brute may seek the published version of 
the masque. It will well repay his attention. 
There is in the reading a unity of effect which 
was lost in the huge proportions of the pro- 
duction : the reader becomes Caliban, learning 
from the colorful pageant of the author's 
imaging how, throughout ages of time, the arts 
of the theatre have shown that man is spirit. 
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on — " 
The education of mankind, in Mr. MaeKaye's 
conception, is twofold, consisting both in the 
inspiration which comes through the minds 
of poets and dreamer-artists, and in growth 
under the action of cooperation. Caliban, the 
brute part of man, is taught by the spirit which 
is the servant of the artist ; he sees a vision, he 
strives to realize what he sees, and then again 
is shown another vision, rousing him to new 
effort and new achievement. So far all is 
clear : the scenes from Shakespeare, illustrat- 
ing the flashes of vision through the artist, 
were conjured up for Caliban and, one after 
the other, showed a definite effect upon him; 
the pageant of history, passing in the great 
central ring of the amphitheatre — the arts 



42 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

of the theatre in the broad sense including 
song and dance — swept by to show how men 
had played together. Caliban crept on his 
belly, then stood totteringly erect, and learned 
to walk like a man : Lust, War, and Death 
were overcome one by one, and Time rose to 
promise more than had been accomplished. 
But in spite of the beauty and the grandeur 
of the production, as it was given in the circle 
of the Stadium of the College of the City of 
New York, I found it not as satisfying as the 
reading had been, and far less complete than 
the jumbled rehearsal which it had been my 
privilege to witness several nights before the 
first performance. 

The causes of this imperfection are so closely 
associated with the audience, and are so im- 
portant in a social as well as an artistic sense, 
that, far from being out of place in the dis- 
cussion, they are necessary to our argument. 
For instance, the great audience was in itself 
a keen disappointment. It lacked the con- 
centration and coherence which is the most 
impressive quality in a crowd which fills a 
great stadium for a football game: it was ill 



CALIBAN 43 

at ease, nervous, restless, self-conscious, curious, 
thoughtless, and diffuse. Only a small frac- 
tion of the thousands who flocked into the 
oval of seats had even seen a stadium filled 
with people : the vastness of the assembly, 
the amazing rapidity with which things hap- 
pened, the mysterious sensation of listening 
to voices which came from a block away — 
all these new experiences created a strangeness 
which called for some great unifying emotion 
to weld the thousand wandering minds into 
one mind. One such moment did come near 
the middle of the action, a moment which 
stood out above all others as the fiery cross, 
which symbolized it, flamed out above every 
other scenic effect. 

Caliban, from howling brutishly on his 
belly, had been raised to the dignity of wearing 
the trappings of art, through the teaching of 
his master. Full of confidence, he grasped the 
magic wand, himself to conjure up a vision. 
At first he was successful ; then, moved by the 
vision of Brutus to a memory of what he had 
seen in the revels of Caligula, he lifted his 
wand and voice, and brutish once more, sum- 



44 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

rnoned the forces of Lust, the servant of his 
ancient god and father. They flocked in from 
the shadows where the old god's priests were 
lurking, up from the grass and from the golden 
sands of Time, and overran the masque stage, 
the Temple of Art, in a glorious sordid rush. 
The defenders of art crouched helpless against 
the pillars of the defiled temple ; it seemed that 
the Spirit of Beauty, the daughter of the artist, 
would be torn from her shrine and defiled. 
Then, to the sound of trumpets triumphant, 
flashed against the sky the Cross, and in the 
inner stage, where things of the mind were 
revealed, appeared the vision of Saint Agnes 
and her lamb, and A Shepherd, who proved 
to be the Master-Artist himself. 

It was a great moment; without exception 
opinion has judged it the greatest, I think. 
The reason is fundamental and of the most 
vital importance. At this instant there was 
one centre of action, not three, as there were 
even when only one centre of action was being 
used, and the movement shifted among them. 
For the most part, the spoken word of the 
masque was concentrated upon the great masque 



CALIBAN 45 

stage, the pageant of Time swept by in the 
great yellow circle, and the flashes of Shake- 
speare were shown by the opening of curtains 
at the very back of all. But, at the point of 
which I speak, the vision of the artist stirred 
the brute to action; he in turn roused the mob 
into actual participation in the masque-move- 
ment, destructive but still action — to be 
stilled once more by the flash of an inspira- 
tion, pictured in the area sacred to mind. And 
this clash, bringing the most unified and the 
most emotional moment of the masque, gave 
the audience its biggest thrill, a fact which 
points clearly to the one weakness of the 
conception and stage management. 

The whole fundamental idea in Caliban, 
just like the fundamental conception of a 
community theatre, is the value in education 
and growth, not only of seeing, but of feeling 
and of doing. Mankind, stirred by imagina- 
tion through the inspiration of a seer, acts, and 
so learns. So Caliban should not merely have 
watched the pageant of Time, as it passed 
before him, at the word of the artist. The 
visions of the artist were the flashes of spirit 



46 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

which reached even his sordidness, but the 
action on the sands of time — the Egyptians 
writhing in religious ecstasy, the Greeks re- 
joicing in the joy of perfect physical beauty, 
and the Romans flinging the pearls of art 
before the swine of low desires, all these were 
not pictures thrown upon a screen for Caliban 
to watch. They were Caliban. Caliban, wor- 
shiping the gods of ancient Egypt with dance 
and rhythmic motion, Caliban reaching sum- 
mits of art, but with his feet still the feet of a 
monster, and finally, Caliban succumbing to 
the old monstrous strength and weakness. 
We could have wished to see him thus clothed 
in the garments of Time, and "taking hands, 
upon these yellow sands. " In this way the 
continuity, which is so evident in reading Mr. 
MacKaye's play, would have been apparent 
in the mammoth production. 

Curiously enough, the rehearsal — dis- 
jointed, disorganized, fragmentary, and un- 
finished — gave a feeling of unity that the 
performance failed to give. The memory of 
it will linger long in my mind as the exponent 
of the Masque Idea. 



CALIBAN 47 

Dusk was falling over the Stadium of the 
College of the City of New York. The horse- 
shoe of seats, curiously knit together of wood 
and cement, was empty, suggesting for the 
moment some dream of antiquity, some reminis- 
cence of the Roman amphitheatre awaiting the 
spectacle of lions or of gladiators. From the 
flat end, where a stage had been built, the 
hoarse shouts of the master-carpenter rose 
over the hollow beats of a hammer. The 
great face of Setebos, a painted horror, still 
wet, grinned up at groups of boys and girls 
who began to straggle in through the narrow 
stage entrances to the grass ring in the centre. 
Over in one corner an energetic game of base 
ball proved that this was not the Roman 
Empire, but the United States of America. 

Behind the stage there was bustle, but little 
confusion. Tickets were given out by assist- 
ants, and a line had formed before a window 
marked "Costumes", while in the dressing- 
rooms activity was beginning, and the First 
Aid tent awaited patronage. 

With the coming of darkness the continually 
augmented groups were drawn into a solid whole. 



48 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

Each group formed a quiet audience to the per- 
formances of the others, waiting with extraor- 
dinary patience for the call which mobilized 
their "turn." The services of the brisk ushers 
were rarely needed to quiet disturbance or 
to hush talking. Through a megaphone the 
director from a platform encouraged, ha- 
rangued, and exhorted the hundreds of actors 
who were taking part in the interludes. 

A rehearsal, even a complete rehearsal, is 
curiously lacking in proportion and in emphasis. 
But here was a rehearsal only half costumed, in 
which episodes followed each other without 
attempt at logic. Now youths in Greek tunics 
swept across the field, half revealed in the dim 
light, swaying and moving like some animation 
of an old frieze. They were followed, in 
comical contrast, by a man in a well-cut over- 
coat and derby hat, who rode in a chariot of 
exotic design, drawn by half-naked slaves, 
and balancing across his knee a Roman dancing 
maiden whose companions ran after the pro- 
cession with little cries. Then, w r ith a sudden 
change, they were gone, and the field was 
flooded w r ith new figures. They moved 



CALIBAN 49 

steadily, slowly, with increasing precision to 
the jigging strains of the Tideswell Morris 
Dance : they came on and on until there 
seemed to be no end. These were Shake- 
speare's own merrymakers, come to set up the 
Maypole of Jollity on the shores of our Puritan 
land. And, as if recognizing their importance, 
the quiet watchers in the shadows burst into 
applause which echoed through the spaces of 
the great stadium like a prophecy. 

Meanwhile, — unaware of the presence of any 
one else, — the persons of the masque proper 
were busy with their lines and action upon 
the nearly finished stage. Over the whole, 
the electrician sent flashes of magical light, and 
the chorus, invisible above the stage, some- 
times accompanied the action, and some- 
times wandered away at its own sweet will. 

From every reasonable point of view, the 
effect should have been a hodgepodge. And to 
the tired workers who had been struggling so 
long to make a coherent whole, it no doubt 
seemed a nightmare. For weeks many of 
them had sacrificed their evenings, coming to 
rehearsals under difficulties, and returning 



50 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

wearily to beds from which the ordinary busi- 
ness of the day would call them promptly the 
next morning. The work was done not easily, 
but with an effort, and because of the sacrifice 
and difficulty which they represented, the 
pictures were strung one after the other upon the 
spirit of fellowship as beads hang upon a silken 
thread. Underneath and through the medley 
throbbed the inspiration of a great cooperative 
feeling. 

There was a friendly neighborliness about the 
entire gathering which seemed as out of place 
in New York as. a baby carriage] in Times 
Square. Nothing pleasant and friendly was 
surprising. A slim lady in Egyptian draperies 
was accosted in the shadowy region behind the 
scenes by an Elizabethan maiden who proved 
to be a college classmate. Not even the slight- 
est greeting passed between them, merely a 
brisk, casual question and answer. "Oh, 
Ann," cried the newcomer, "have you seen 
Marjorie Trump?" "Not since Class day!" 
was the calm reply. "I am sorry." And 
the Egyptian lady passed into her dress- 
ing room without realizing that it had been 



CALIBAN 51 

an equal length of time since she greeted her 
questioner ! 

Even more unusual perhaps was the country- 
town joviality which prevailed among the 
audience. Those thousands had a genuine in- 
terest, and a curiosity which was far from idle. 
The friendly flock on the Broadway car which 
carried me northward might have been migrat- 
ing toward the circus on an annual outing. 
They were chatty. They laughed at the lack 
of seats, even at the lack of standing room. 
Every one felt that this was a holiday, for his 
neighbor as well as for himself. But chief of 
them all was the genial conductor. He begged 
the packed passengers to "step up forward ", 
with patently false promises of "more room up 
front." He argued that by stepping forward 
they would be that much nearer " the show." 
He crowded in dozens where there should have 
been two or three; he threatened, coaxed, 
and wheedled until the car was shaken with 
quick ripples of laughter. At every stop he 
called with genial deference to warn a crushed 
little woman huddled against the door, "Are 
ye ready, lady dear?" in order that she 



52 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

might not drop out as the door opened. In 
leaving, I expressed the desire that the conductor 
might be going with us all. He shook his gray 
head vigorously. "Sure/' he answered blithely, 
with a smile which would have delighted the 
organizers of the masque could they have seen 
it, "who would bring them all up here, if I went 
gallivantin' ? " 

Then too, the bus which carried me away from 
the spectacle was filled with people who were 
talking of Caliban. Some were pleased, others 
unmoved, and one or two frankly puzzled; but 
they were all eager to discuss what they had 
seen. " Can you tell me what it was all about ? " 
one woman anxiously asked me. I handed her 
a programme instead of answering, pointing 
to certain lines ; whereupon, above the noise of 
the jolting, she read the synopsis of the action 
aloud, and we all listened. 

However, the faults of this greatest commu- 
nity festival which we have attempted are less 
important than the promise which it carried of 
progress to better and greater achievement. 
The technique of the spectacle-drama will 
change; the fundamental conception will not 



CALIBAN 53 

often, I think, be as purely intellectual as the one 
which was destined to do honor to Shakespeare. 
Thus the audience will become accustomed to 
thinking of itself in the large terms necessary 
under the arch of heaven and the stars. But 
surely the drama of the community will become 
not an occasional occurrence, not a sporadic 
growth, but a national institution. Caliban 
has opened the door into an unexplored garden, 
rich with no one knows what fruits. The com- 
munity masque is one of the many signs which 
point indisputably to the establishment of a 
community theatre, for the community masque 
has proved valuable in bringing out temporarily 
the qualities in the community which we seek, 
by means of the community theatre, to establish 
permanently. The joy of play, the joy of co- 
operation, the expression of joy through art, 
the pleasure of creation, the unifying force of a 
common interest, all were evidentlin the masque. 
In a community theatre they would be continued 
instead of lapsing at the end of one artistic 
blooming. The masque is the apple tree which 
flowers in the spring; the theatre is like the 
orange, rich perpetually in blooms and in fruit ! 



CHAPTER IV 

Little Theatres 

What is often called "The Little Theatre 
Movement" is vigorous in this country, al- 
though it is young. Because it covers a short 
period of time, and because it is less a definite 
movement than a number of sporadic and inde- 
pendent protests against an existing condition 
which grope toward a common goal still vague 
— for all these reasons, generalizations about 
the Little Theatre are apt to prove premature 
judgments. However, it may safely be asserted 
that the enthusiasm for small theatres indepen- 
dent of the organization which we call "the com- 
mercial theatre" is like the spirit which initiates 
the pageant and the community masque, evi- 
dence of the awakening of the American audi- 
ence to active participation in the art of 
the theatre. In certain places interest in 
the dramatic expression of common emotion 

54 



LITTLE THEATRES 55 

has taken the form of the pageant or the pageant- 
masque. In others the emotion has been con- 
fined to a smaller space and fewer people, and 
the results have lasted a longer time by means 
of some locally organized theatrical enterprise. 
Each is a definite step toward the establishment 
of the institution to be the ultimate fulfilment 
of both desires — the community theatre. 

To trace the history of the Little Theatre from 
its beginnings on the continent, fascinating as 
it would be, is not my purpose here. Just what 
social and artistic influences have been brought 
to bear on, let us say, the Prairie Playhouse of 
Galesburg, Illinois, by such theatres as Antoine's 
and Reinhardt's, or by the New Free Folk 
Stage in Berlin (to which several managements 
refer with admiration) would be an interesting 
problem, but one which would prove, I think, 
insoluble. The history of the Little Theatre is 
unimportant as yet; we must think of the 
future and the present rather than of the past. 

For convenience I have placed in the Appen- 
dix a list of the Little Theatres of America. It 
is as complete as possible. At this time of 
expansion, the list must necessarily fail to 



56 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

include some of the newest ventures ; no doubt 
since the compilation fresh Little Theatres have 
come into being, and it may be that valuable 
but unadvertised efforts have escaped my no- 
tice. Most fervently do I hope so, for it is from 
these simple, unsophisticated places that the 
theatre will draw most strength. However, 
such examples as have come to my hand fall 
naturally into two classes : just as the theatre 
has been divided by the footlights into artists 
and audience, so the new theatres have had their 
origin upon one side or the other of that same 
line; on the one hand there are organizations 
which owe their existence to the inspiration of 
some artist, and on the other there are those 
which came from a social need visualized by an 
outstanding figure or figures in the audience or 
social body. These two classes might be called 
the Art Theatres and the Economic Theatres in 
order that they may be distinguished. 

Of the first type I shall speak briefly. They 
have been largely a reflection of the new art of 
the theatre as it was known in France, in Ger- 
many, and in Russia. They are half -measures. 
But they are not for that reason to be in the least 



LITTLE THEATRES 57 

condemned ; rather they are to be encouraged 
and commended, not because "half-a-loaf is 
better than no bread ", but because as half- 
measures they are a long step toward the thing 
for which we are struggling. It is a bright 
prognostication that when we look for instances 
of spontaneous and apparently isolated attempts 
to bring something fresh and lovely into the 
theatre, we find many shrines with ardent wor- 
shippers. There is a Little Theatre in Balti- 
more and one in Los Angeles ; Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, has one, and so has a tiny settlement at 
Blue Hill, Maine. As far as it is possible to 
tell, the beginnings have been practically con- 
temporaneous. The difference of a few months 
in the dates of founding may be disregarded. 

But, in spite of a class similarity, there is 
great variety in the details of the organization 
of these Little Theatres. Many of the asso- 
ciations are limited by the size of their place of 
production to a narrow list of subscribers, who 
make up the small audience and whose annual 
subscriptions furnish funds for the productions. 
Casts for such theatres seem usually to be either 
professional actors or talented amateurs who 



58 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

come from without as well as within the cor- 
porate body. Such a theatre was The Toy 
of Boston, when it flourished in Mrs. Gale's 
erstwhile stable in Lime Street. The Vagabond 
Players suffer a similar limitation in their little 
converted barroom, of which a photograph is 
included in this volume. If the playhouse holds 
only sixty-two persons, the clientele cannot be 
too varied ! 

Artistically, the very smallness of our Little 
Playhouses has produced surprisingly big re- 
sults. The Little Theatres have influenced the 
arts of the theatre — the arts of scene-painting 
and of acting, especially — much more than we 
realize. Nothing could be as convincing an 
argument for simplicity as the intimacy of a 
tiny theatre ; the scene must be cleared of too 
much detail and clutter, and the action must be 
restrained and perfectly simple. Mr. Livingston 
Piatt, from The Toy Theatre, Mr. Raymond 
Johnson, from The Chicago Little Theatre, Mr. 
Frank Zimmerer, whose early work was done in 
settlement houses, are names of weight even in 
professional circles : they have been trained in 
a hard school where distance must be a matter 



LITTLE THEATRES 59 

of perspective, illusion, and light, and they 
learned to make magic from that training. 
Whatever maybe said about freeing art from the 
bonds of convention, it is conceded, I believe, 
that limitations serve as a goad to an artist in 
his apprenticeship. And the narrow prosce- 
nium, the lack of space, the closeness of the 
audience, all call for skill and ingenuity which 
the harassed worker seldom appreciates at the 
moment of the struggle. The acting too has 
been simplified, and the actor has often been 
given opportunities of experiment and variety 
in his interpretation which the methods of our 
professional theatre forbid. 

But what was fortunate in the artistic light 
has been unlucky from the social angle. In- 
stead of social theatres, we have had society 
theatres, a wholly different matter. Naturally, 
the fostering group, in many cases, has been the 
group which has leisure, and that group is the 
one which is most sophisticated, most influenced 
by the tradition of the old theatre and of the old 
world, the one which has least need of an outlet 
for emotion, and which does not suffer from the 
lack of beauty. Not long ago in a small city 



60 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

rich in tradition and in history, far removed 
from the centres of artistic life, and teeming 
with youth and enthusiasm, certain intelligent 
people were discussing an entertainment to ac- 
company the municipal Christmas tree. The 
most eager of them all — the arbiter eligantia- 
rum — shook her head regretfully. "We could 
not do it," she said, with discouragement in her 
face and voice, w it is too difficult to persuade the 
young people to take part even in a small 
performance. If we want financial support, we 
must have people in our plays who can bring 
their families, and debutantes have so many 
parties that they are bored by the suggestion." 
And instantly there came to my mind the story 
told by Mrs. Henniger of a little girl who was 
backward in her class at school, shy, ill at ease, 
and seemingly stupid, until she was put into a 
cast of The Little Princess. There she was one 
of the children at the "party." As rehearsals 
progressed, her shyness vanished. The little 
girls were encouraged to work out each her own 
individual action, and the little shy one, who 
could not dance, wept bitterly for fear she might 
be sent away. But when she was told that she 



LITTLE THEATRES 61 

could think of something to do herself, her little 
brain scurried about, and she triumphantly 
suggested that she might turn the leaves of the 
music for the girl who played the piano ! The 
fact that she was "promoted" that term in 
school may not have helped the door receipts of 
The Little Princess, but it certainly had a value. 
And what a contrast she offers to the debu- 
tantes who are so busy with parties that they 
have no time for a thing of beauty ! Surely there 
is no limitation so rigid and unyielding as the 
barrier set up by "Society." To make the 
Little Theatre unfailingly useful, it must be 
freed from that bond. 

Another type of the Art Little Theatre which 
has contributed not a little to our art of the 
theatre is that which is subsidized by a patron, 
such as The Los Angeles Little Theatre, and 
The Lake Forest Players, and several tiny sum- 
mer theatres in the villages of New England. 
Most of these have a purely local importance, I 
think, and therefore do not call for especial at- 
tention here. But one which flourishes under 
a benevolent despotism has made itself so 
noticed that we must pause and examine it in 



62 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

some detail — I mean The Neighborhood Play- 
house in New York. 

The Neighborhood Playhouse, in a city full 
of theatres, far away in a quiet corner, on the 
pitiful, promise-blessed East Side of the great 
city, has made more than one commercial pro- 
ducer squirm under the glare of his spotlight. 
Unlike many or most of the Little Theatres in 
our country, it has a deep root in so funda- 
mental a thing as race : in its purely neighbor- 
hood manifestation, it gives exquisite expression 
to the beauty sleeping in the mind of the long 
silenced Jewish people. The neighborhood of 
which the theatre is the mouthpiece is the 
crowded and stifled one which huddles round the 
Nurses' Settlement in Henry Street. For years 
the work in dramatic classes has been laying a 
foundation upon which the beauty of The 
Neighborhood Playhouse has been based. The 
art classes, the sewing classes, and other 
branches of the Settlement have made con- 
tributions. The generous founders are young 
women who give not only a liberal endowment 
of money but of taste and imagination as well, 
besides strenuous, continued, mental and physi- 




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LITTLE THEATRES 63 

cal labor. They desire ardently that the theatre 
express all that is fine in the ancient and modern 
life of the people. Beautiful old Jewish rituals 
have been revived, bright with color and swing- 
ing with the joyful motion of the East, to take 
a place beside much that is excellent in modern 
dramatic writing. An occasional play has been 
given in Yiddish. The settings are unfailingly 
interesting and often very beautiful. The 
personnel of the cast is prevailingly of the neigh- 
borhood, and although top hats do appear there, 
the audience is chiefly drawn from the Lower 
East Side. 

A performance in The Neighborhood Play- 
house is never stupid to the student. It may 
be an interesting experiment, and often it is 
an achievement of definite artistic value. But 
the general policy of the playhouse is the Settle- 
ment policy. Unusual artistic fare is provided 
for the community under the leadership of 
women of high ideals, but that fare is, after all, 
given. The underlying spirit of the place is a 
benevolent one : the people work together, they 
give expression to emotions of their race, but 
they are never free. It may be that the need, 



64 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

in the situation in which The Neighborhood 
Playhouse finds itself, is for such an educational 
and protective organization. The young people 
of Grand Street are part of New York, and many 
of them are totally unfit for the life of that city. 
It is not my intention to criticize the evident 
good which has been accomplished by Settlements 
in great cities, but their policy is acknowledged 
to be one of expediency. They are the First 
Aid class of Social Science. They put the in- 
jured member into a splint, but do not set it. 
After the First Aider must come one who will 
make it possible for Nature to finish the work 
of healing ! So the force of humanity is always 
making achievement, under the guidance of 
some great constructor who leads without di- 
recting. To return to our special instance, 
The Neighborhood Theatre will realize the ideal 
of a community theatre only when it becomes 
a self-governing body. Until that time it may 
do excellent work, but it is not providing for its 
own future. And although this change would 
mean a temporary lowering of the artistic level 
which it undoubtedly has set for itself, it would 
substitute an ever broadening horizon. 



LITTLE THEATRES 65 

Still a third division are those theatres which 
have taken impetus from the success in England 
and on the Continent, of playhouses with a 
municipal endowment. At Northampton one 
has continued for several years to furnish en- 
tertainment for the undergraduates and faculty 
of Smith College as well as for the inhabitants 
of the Massachusetts manufacturing town : and 
in Pittsfield another with a similar endowment 
— the shares are owned by wealthy citizens — 
is equally successful. These theatres are, of 
course, professional, and they take their key- 
note from Broadway, slightly tinged with popu- 
lar intellectualism. They often do good work, 
and express in a certain measure the tastes of 
the audience, but they are not the possession of 
the audience as the community theatre should 
be the possession of the community. 

Several attempts have been made to establish 
repertory theatres in this country. The New 
Theatre in New York combined with a repertory 
idea the general aim of the theatre of the com- 
munity magnified to national terms. The ex- 
plosion of the notion that a national theatre 
could be superimposed, which came with the 



66 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

failure of The New Theatre, was the contribu- 
tion of that organization to the history of the 
theatre. Later, in Boston, a repertory attempt 
was made under the title of the Henry Jewett 
Players, but the organization as it now exists 
is on the basis of a stock rather than of a reper- 
tory company. Finally, in New York once 
more, Miss Grace George made a considerable 
degree of success with one season of repertory 
at The Playhouse in Forty-eighth Street, and it 
is to be regretted that it has not been continued. 
But the repertory theatre — whatever oppor- 
tunities it may offer to artists of the theatre — 
is not the final goal when it is unconnected with 
the community. And the municipal theatre, 
financed by a few shareholders for the benefit of 
a town or city, is not completely enough of the 
community to satisfy the most pressing demands. 
Here and there are theatres which call them- 
selves experimental. One of the earliest of these 
was Professor Baker's "47 Workshop" which — 
taking its numerical name from "English 47, — 
Technique of the Drama", as listed in the 
catalogue of Harvard University — was es- 
tablished to provide a dramatic laboratory 



LITTLE THEATRES 67 

for the students of Professor Baker's well- 
known course. There in the insufficient theatre 
of Radcliffe College, the plays which are being 
written under Professor Baker's guidance are 
given a hearing to an audience composed of in- 
terested people whose written criticisms are a 
valuable part of the routine. Here everything 
is for the benefit of the author, or, as Professor 
Baker himself writes : "What I should like to 
have particularly emphasized is that the 47 
Workshop is not simply a place for the trying- 
out of our plays, but that it is a place where 
anybody who has anything to offer in the 
theatrical arts may have a hearing. We have 
at present new and promising people at work 
on theatrical design and costumes, training in 
acting, and in all the departments behind the 
curtain. We have recently established a Book- 
shop on the evenings of the performances, at 
which any published plays of the Harvard 
Dramatic Club or the 47 Workshop maybe had." 
This workshop idea of Professor Baker's has 
been developed by one of his pupils in a most in- 
teresting way at the University of North Dakota. 
Professor Frederick Koch went out from Har- 



68 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

vard to a field which is infinitely richer in dra- 
matic promise because it is nearer to a simple 
and unsophisticated manner of living, and he has 
with great wisdom clung as closely as he has 
been able to the life of his prairie workmen. So 
vigorous is the work of the Sock and Buskin 
Society upon which the producing of plays falls, 
that Professor Koch is able to write, " In these 
few years it has been demonstrated to us that 
practically the first generation of Americans 
from the soil, from our prairie pioneers, can 
translate its own thrilling life into new dramatic 
and literary forms — convincing and beautiful, 
and promising much toward a genuinely native 
art yet to come." 

Perhaps the most interesting of all Professor 
Koch's innovations, however, are the coopera- 
tive pageants which he has produced upon his 
lovely outdoor stage. These were the work not 
of one man but of a class of twenty, working 
in close and eager consultation, and yet they 
read most convincingly. The celebration of 
the Shakespeare Tercentenary was the occasion 
for a pageant-masque in which the Master 
Playwright was shown influenced by the strange 



LITTLE THEATRES 69 

news of far-away America, thus tying North 
Dakota to the days of good Queen Bess — as 
was fitting and proper. Here is a community 
laboratory : here is a lesson for universities, and 
a great lesson for the community theatre when it 
shall find itself in action. 

The West, because it lacks so many posses- 
sions of the East, is bound to have many things 
for which the East may not hope. A rural 
theatre is one of these, where plays are produced 
for the country folk, and which is in a measure 
a strolling players' group. This too is in North 
Dakota, and it is under the management of Mr. 
Arvold and the Agricultural College in Fargo. 
I shall say more of the universities of the West 
in a future chapter. 

The rural theatre, rich with promise of joy 
and life for the isolated farm dweller, brings me 
naturally in my review of the many Little 
Theatres to The Portmanteau Theatre of Stuart 
Walker. Here is a true revival of the strolling 
players ! Mr. Walker's stage packs up in boxes, 
and his lovely scenes and magic lighting are sent 
about the country, if not by parcel post, by a 
method as expeditious. It is a new form of 



70 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

theatre which had its origin strictly within the 
professional theatre, for Mr. Walker had a long 
training under as conservative a master as Mr. 
Belasco, but it has in its fresh youth and en- 
thusiasm little of the faults of the theatrical 
profession as we know it to-day. And although 
it is far removed from any community — it is 
the "Theatre without a home" always "on the 
branch " — it has a very poignant message for 
the community theatre. 

First of all, The Portmanteau Theatre has 
shown what can be done with little money and 
some care and brain — as no other one theatrical 
enterprise has done. And in the second place 
it has cut loose from much of the paraphernalia 
which has been considered an integral part of 
theatrical production, and has made the simple 
playing of delightful plays as possible in a barn 
as on Broadway. Just what the ultimate de- 
velopment of Mr. Walker's invention may be it 
is not possible to say, but when the community 
theatre becomes a reality it will undoubtedly 
find The Portmanteau Theatre — or theatres — 
its close ally. 

In the brief examination given the Art 




Photo by White Studio. Courtesy of Portmanteau Theatre. 
GAMMER GURTON'S NEEDLE 
The vigor and vitality of the old comedy emphasized by the whimsy of the set. 



LITTLE THEATRES 71 

Theatres, one or two instances have been 
touched upon which might well come under the 
Economic Theatre as well. The Neighborhood 
Playhouse is one of these, and Professor Freder- 
ick Koch's Laboratory in the Bankside Theatre 
at the University of North Dakota is another. 
There are many settlement houses where the 
Dramatic Club might well be given the dignity 
of the title Theatre, but they are too numerous 
to require more than mention as a class. One of 
them, the Hull House organization, which grew 
up from Miss Addams' inspiration at Oberam- 
mergau, stands out above the others because 
of its age and its achievement ; it has had the 
honor of producing for the first time many plays 
of a serious, and more especially, of a sociological 
nature — Galsworthy's Justice was one. 



CHAPTER V 

Democratic Institutions 

The nature of democracy makes it very diffi- 
cult to judge the institutions of democracy, 
and to allot to each the measure of praise or of 
blame which is its due. Other forms of na- 
tional organization have an immediate attain- 
ment which constitutes success, and without 
it they are failures. It is simple, in history, to 
trace the criterion by which to judge monarchies 
and empires. The essence of kingship has never 
been more perfectly phrased than in the famous 
words of Louis the Fourteenth when he said, 
"L'etat c'est moi." And when the State ceases 
to exist primarily for the king, as soon as the 
divine right to rule becomes a matter for ques- 
tion — at that moment monarchy begins to 
fail. So, in an empire, if the sovereignty of the 
empire state is diminished, if the States become 
equal in power, the empire ceases. And all in- 

72 



DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 73 

stitutions of a monarchy which do not support 
and pander to the power of the king are failures, 
just as imperial institutions are failures when 
they do not support the central sovereign State. 
But the institutions of democracy present a 
less simple problem. 

Democracy is a dynamic condition. Democ- 
racy cannot be static. The very ideal of de- 
mocracy implies a goal and a progress as well : 
democracy is the growth and the ever-vanishing 
attainment. What democracy means we cannot 
tell : we see only something toward which we 
must strive with the utmost zeal. 

What, then, is a democratic institution? 
How is it to be tested? In a bureaucracy, 
which presents the most natural contrast to a 
democratic form of government, the aim is effi- 
ciency, the precise smoothness of a well- 
fashioned machine. Are we to apply this 
standard to the institutions of democracy? It 
is done again and again, but are those critics 
who expect a mechanically perfect operation 
the wisest? Are they not thoughtless when 
they say that our organization is too cumber- 
some, our public schools ill-managed, that there 



74 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

is waste of public moneys in the administration 
of the town and state, that good men avoid 
politics, and that offices are filled with rascals 
under a system depending upon the mass of the 
people ? Is it not evident that such criticisms, 
no matter how true they may be, are not funda- 
mentally a criticism of democracy or of demo- 
cratic institutions ? 

When we speak of democracy we speak in 
terms of the spirit, whereas when we put our 
ideals into action we are forced to employ the 
means of mind and of body. Let us look for a 
moment at the old bromide of democratic phi- 
losophy — "All men are created free and equal/' 
How many times during the long march of 
human progress has that pillar of fire blazed in 
hope against the clouds of tyranny? We are 
accustomed to think of it as having its origin 
with Christianity; but the earliest barriers 
were down even before that time, and century 
by century the circle has widened, including 
more and more of humanity. Yet now, perhaps 
more than ever before, the differences in mental 
and moral as well as physical equipment are 
evident. Shall we, then, in spite of the varying 




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DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 75 

heritage, continue to believe that there is any 
equality upon earth? Yes, "all men are 
created free and equal" is none the less true be- 
cause of the manifest inequalities in mankind's 
physical, mental, and material birthright. For 
freedom and equality are of the spirit, from 
which democracy seeks to remove the handicap 
by equalizing opportunity of mind and of body, 
since spirit is so closely wrapped in its garment 
of environment. 

Democracy seeks to equalize opportunity. 
Opportunity — there is undoubtedly the key- 
note of democracy. Its institutions must be 
weighed not for what they are actually achieving 
alone, but for what they offer to those whom 
they influence. They must carry within them- 
selves the seed of their own perpetuation and 
perfection. A democratic institution is more 
than an organization to meet certain ends, to 
solve certain immediate problems ; it is the solu- 
tion of those problems through the extent of the 
future as well. It must have not only efficiency, 
but the power to grow, and if one element is 
to be in excess of the other, the power to grow 
is more imperative. 



7G THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

In a certain city there arose not long ago the 
need for a revision of the civic affairs. Several 
new plans were proposed, of which two seemed 
to be more practical than any others ; namely, 
that a commission should be chosen to control 
the city, or that it should be given into the hands 
of an efficiency expert, a business manager. 
Both these plans have been adopted by other 
cities; there was nothing in either suggestion 
which was revolutionary. And yet that city 
disposed of each in turn for equally sound 
reasons. They argued that what a city needs, 
what a city must have in order to be well gov- 
erned, is not a capable business man, nor yet a 
board of three capable business men in author- 
ity, but good citizens. The city manager may 
do well this year and next year, but what if the 
citizens, either from lack of interest or from ac- 
tual evil intent, choose for that position a bad 
man ? Will the situation not be greatly aggra- 
vated ? An absolute — or even a powerful — 
authority, if it be wrong, has unlimited force. 
And if the citizens are not all keenly alive to 
their responsibilities, the power so delegated is 
bound to come finally into evil hands. Thus 



DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 77 

the city decided that a popular representative 
form of city government, closely responsible to 
the citizens, was what they wanted, and instead 
of changing their form of administration, they 
set out upon a campaign of stirring the citizens 
to interest and action. The results have not 
been startling, but the city is growing more 
promising every day. 

Democracy has always seemed to me like a 
giant statue in the sculptor's atelier. We have 
the sculptor, his material and his idea, and in 
a work of art the three are separate. But in 
the democracy they are the same. The idea 
exists, clear as long as it can be limited, possible 
to perfect in miniature, but having, as a part of 
its greatness, vast proportions and an heroic cast. 
The perfect State could be made by the assem- 
bling of certain limited people together, perhaps 
— if they were the right people ; and yet, when 
the attempt has been made, it has always proved 
that the very limitation injured the perfection 
of the ideal. The material of which the State 
must be formed is the people. They are un- 
trained. They need purification. And the 
workman, the artist, he is represented by the 



78 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

people, untrained and groping, gaining a tech- 
nique and a surety as he labors, growing as the 
work grows in beauty and in power. The very 
conception, the very thought of perfection will 
be at first as vague and indifferent as the out- 
lines of the statue when the artist first takes his 
tool in hand, but as the work progresses and the 
workman grows, the conception will gain in 
beauty. 

If we are willing to concede that democracy 
seeks to give an equal opportunity for growth 
to all of its citizens, it makes the testing of 
democratic institutions less complex. The final 
analysis must prove whether or not they permit 
the greatest freedom of the individual without 
limiting the freedom of the whole and the 
growth of the institution. The public schools, 
which I have mentioned so often, are a case in 
point. They offer an education to every child ; 
they do not offer a perfect education because we 
have not yet discovered a perfect one, but there 
are no limits set beyond which an individual may 
not go, and the schools carry, in their universal 
opportunity, the possibility of attaining unknown 
heights. The schools are open to every child. 



DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 79 

The same intellectual fare is set before all the 
children. And no boy or girl is hindered from 
becoming the future master of that school, to 
carry on its ideals and teaching in a new genera- 
tion. This fact, taken in addition to the con- 
tinual, eager, and scorching criticism of educators, 
is the most encouraging thing about our system 
of education. It is alive, it is vital, it is a part 
of the life of all the people ; in a word, it is grow- 
ing into an expression of an ideal. 

Why should we not have a national laboratory 
of democracy, where, under conditions as nearly 
ideal as possible, experiments in the technique of 
democracy might be made ? Indeed there exist 
already limited communities where useful tests 
might be made, and where, unless I am mistaken, 
unconscious experimentation is carried on. I 
mean the universities and especially those of the 
West, which are less influenced by the tradition 
of learning inherited from Europe than are the 
older Eastern ones. In a college we have a com- 
munity from which the great chasms have been 
removed. The citizenry of this community is 
standardized by means of physical and mental 
examination, and by the fact that the struggle 



80 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

for existence is removed from within the college 
walls. Here is a group of people set above the 
currents of thought which influence the world, 
similarly endowed in most matters, and yet as 
varied as humanity will be wherever it is found. 
Surely here new forms of cooperation might be 
given trial, and no doubt might be invented. 

Student government is the rule rather than the 
exception at the present time in colleges. For 
the most part, this term applies to a policing of 
the college community. Self-restraint is sub- 
stituted for rule from above and is much more 
successful. Curiously enough, it has also been 
found a more stringent regime than the old one. 
And certain educators have gone so far as to 
express the wish that the student body may 
soon be given a voice and a responsibility in the 
management of affairs now considered the 
metier of the faculty and overseers. 

I remember an incident, related I think by 
Mr. Lincoln Steffens, in an article I read in my 
college days, which indicates the effect of such an 
innovation. (I trust I do not distort the ac- 
count, which I am unable to verify.) Some 
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DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 81 

versity found themselves listening to dry-as- 
dust lectures. The professors meandered at 
will over unimportant historical facts, instead of 
speaking practically and succinctly : men who 
had made great contributions to the science 
and thought of their subjects never came to 
them because of their slovenly methods. The 
indignant enthusiasts organized a new set of 
classes outside university control. They spoke 
harshly to the poor Herr Doktor. They per- 
mitted him no fooling and if he chanced to be 
late to a lecture they took him to task. The 
classes were a success. Who knows what the 
casual undergraduate might not accomplish 
under the prick of responsibility ? 

"Why," cries a much-loved professor in my 
own university, "why do they speak of 'interests 
and activities' in contrast with studies which 
we all know are neither interesting nor active? 
Tell me why !" It is evident that were "inter- 
ests and activities " assigned by the paternal 
benevolence of an ancient curriculum, they too 
might become sluggish and perfunctory. 

Athletics used to unify colleges ; but during 
the past decade the forces of the theatre — usu- 



82 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

ally called dramatics — have been gaining favor. 
The instance of Professor . Koch's department 
in the University of North Dakota is only one : 
varied are the rumors of remarkable work 
which college undergraduates are doing. The 
Stadium at Harvard was new when it was used 
for the setting of Joan of Arc; the Yale Bowl 
was scarcely finished when it was utilized for 
Mr. Granville Barker's Greek revival, and for 
the dramatic celebration of a university holiday ; 
and we have already reviewed at some length 
the use to which the College of the City of New 
York put its stadium in the production of Cali- 
ban. There is indication of the trend in the con- 
version of the vast monuments to athletics for 
the purposes of drama, but beside this fact 
smaller units have also been making an impres- 
sion on the world at large. The type of college 
dramatic club has changed, and in place of vapid 
imitations of what is worst on Broadway, we 
have interesting and valuable work set before 
us in the Yale Dramatic Club, at Harvard 
University and at Dartmouth College. 

A canvass of our colleges might prove rich in 
discoveries for the benefit of democracy and of 



DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS 83 

art. There must exist, unsung without the col- 
lege walls, complete organisms which have 
grown up with the college community and 
which have the beauty of a natural growth. 
Such is the college theatre which it has been my 
privilege to know intimately, and from which, 
because of my association with it, I have drawn 
much of my data. 

All this discussion of college athletics and 
dramatics is not malapropos. If we are to look 
to the universities as to the experimenting 
ground of democracy, it will be well to consider 
in detail the institutions which we find there. 
And w^e shall apply to those institutions the 
test which we apply to all the institutions of 
democracy : we shall ask whether they fulfill the 
great democratic demands. Have they within 
themselves the power to perpetuate themselves 
and in that perpetuation to become more 
perfect ? 



CHAPTER VI 
A College Theatre 

In sketching plans for a community theatre 
I have made continual reference to my ex- 
perience in the Idler Club of Radcliffe College. 
This dramatic club might well be put under 
the head "Little Theatre", since it fulfills a 
social need. But the community is the limited 
community of a college, and therefore the 
theatre stands as the result of laboratory 
experimentation from which we may draw 
conclusions to be applied to new conditions 
with care. The unusual degree of excellence, 
and the intimate response of processes to the 
existing needs are due to the fact that the theatri- 
cal organ is not one which was applied to an 
already matured group, but that it grew with 
the college from small beginnings. 

When a group of women came together in 
Cambridge to study under the direction of 

84 



A COLLEGE THEATRE 85 

Harvard's professors, they came under much 
protest and opposition. Their common en- 
thusiasm so removed them from ordinary facts 
of life that they wanted nothing beyond a con- 
secration to learning. But the attitude toward 
women in an old university relaxed, and year 
by year younger women joined the ranks, until 
the social atmosphere became more normal. 
The desire for a bond arose, and its earliest 
satisfaction was a series of informal meetings 
where a few of the number presented pro- 
grammes of music, dance, tableaux, or scenes 
from Shakespeare. It is interesting to notice 
that these women turned naturally to the same 
mode of entertainment and expression which 
has been customary in every kind of social 
group. 

The efforts were successful. Gradually these 
periodic assemblies for common amusement 
assumed the more formal lines of a club. As 
the college grew, those phases of the meetings 
which were not directly associated with the 
arts of the theatre were dropped. With in- 
creasing frequency, the Idler produced plays. 

But although the augmentation of the stu- 



86 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

dent body had crystallized the social unit into 
the Idler Club, and had assumed the tradition 
that a play occupy the bi-weekly meetings, 
there was no revolutionary change in the 
membership. Eligibility remained as wide as 
the college gates. Any student at Radcliffe 
may be a member of the Idler Club by paying 
her tax of one dollar a year; she cannot be 
otherwise disqualified. The college enrollment 
passed the six hundred mark some time ago, 
but the breadth of this policy is unchangingly 
successful. And whatever other interests 
have been added to the fullness of the under- 
graduate life, there is still nothing which at- 
tempts to supplant the universal function of 
the dramatic club. 

Here near at hand, is a miniature community 
which has fostered the germ of civic unity, and 
produced a theatre expressing the will of the 
community itself. If I may be pardoned a 
paradox, here is a theatre truly universal 
within its own limits. One may say that what 
takes place behind the walls of a woman's 
college is not of vital importance ; and it is 
true that the achievements of this theatre have 



A COLLEGE THEATRE 87 

not startled the world. We must always re- 
member that this is an experiment in the 
laboratory. The fact that an apple fell upon 
Sir Isaac Newton's nose — to refer to an old 
story — was not important except to Sir Isaac ; 
and yet it would not be possible to set down 
in this brief space what the world might have 
lost had the falling of that apple meant noth- 
ing to the scientist beyond the injured mem- 
ber. In the case of the Idler Club, I do not 
find its productions notable, any more than I 
find the undergraduate work in other depart- 
ments remarkable. But the form of organi- 
zation is imperatively suggestive. In the col- 
lege theatre we may watch certain elements 
at work, just as in the laboratory we watch 
the interaction of chemicals in a glass. And 
the results, scientifically applied to life, will 
give us a solution of great problems. 

In watching the action of the chemicals in 
our glass, several points must be kept firmly 
in mind. We are looking for the combination 
of elements which shall simultaneously satisfy 
the social scientist and the artist of the theatre. 
The first, it will be remembered, demands an 



88 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

institution which shall unify the community, 
providing that common interest which is to 
supplant common ancestry and a common re- 
ligious belief. While the artist demands that 
the arts of the theatre flourish like the green 
bay tree : he clamors for an audience filled 
with interest and intelligence, nourishing these 
arts as they have never been nourished, warm- 
ing them with the sunlight of their favor and 
spurring them to growth by the dampening of 
their criticism. Can it be possible that the 
little crucible of a woman's college can contain 
elements so puissant ? 

Writing in 1911, while still an undergraduate, 
the present author spoke as follows of the 
Idler Club, — 

The Club occupies a unique position among 
the dramatic clubs of women's colleges. It 
binds the college together in a social sense. It 
does for Radcliffe what dormitory life, sorori- 
ties, and athletics do for Smith, Vassar, and 
Wellesley. With a carefully conceived and 
smoothly running machinery which is the de- 
velopment of years of slow growth, it is possible 
to produce nine or ten plays a year for the 
members of the club, that is, for college girls 
only; and to manage as well the execution of 



A COLLEGE THEATRE 89 

several large plays to which outsiders are 
admitted. This number may seem large, but 
it could not be reduced without a definite loss. 
If we take away even one meeting, we cut down 
the proportion of the college population which 
now benefits by the productions. The girl who 
can bring tears to your eyes by the pathos or 
the fun of her interpretation of character, the 
girl whose artistic sense finds expression in a 
well-set stage and in a charmingly costumed 
picture, or perhaps the shy Freshman w T ho needs 
to work hard with other people to forget herself 
— one of these will lose much if a single meeting 
is omitted. Statistics of committees show that 
in 1910, seventy-eight girls were used in execu- 
tive positions beside an equal number in acting. 
In this way girls who have administrative 
ability are given the same opportunity to con- 
tribute that is given to those with dramatic 
gifts. Very often the same girl will have experi- 
ence in both branches of play-production, and so 
learn to bear tenderly with a tired leading lady, 
or to have patience with an harassed costumer. 

In this summing up of effects the glass takes 
on the color desired by the social scientist. 
Here is social unity, a bond provided. Here is 
mention of the advantage to every sort of citi- 
zen, the art citizen, the executive citizen, and 
the backward one whose gifts must be found 
and trained. Here is a system where every 



90 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

member of the population is given one chance 
in the course of his lifetime — one official, active, 
dynamic chance — and what more could the 
social scientist ask to see in the cloudy glass ? 

Resuming, the account turns to the artist 
and his interests, in these words : 

Then there is the Audience. For every play 
that she spends behind the scenes, the average 
Radcliffian spends twenty in the seats of the 
auditorium. But has she become bored when 
her course is over? No, she continues to sit 
with unflagging interest. Her attitude has been 
a constantly changing one. In her Freshman 
year she never doubted that the wine was real ; 
there was a lump in her throat at the sobbing of 
the heroine. As a Sophomore she took delight 
in large criticisms, often wrong, but still based 
upon thought : she was learning that art is not 
all emotion. By Junior year she had reached 
the "upper-class" attitude, and influenced by 
her own experience, had found an intelligence in 
matters of technique, a keen critical faculty in 
the judgment of plays, acting, and details of 
stage setting. Four years of Idlers have taught 
her something of what is good in acting and 
what worth while in drama. If she wishes to 
work more deeply upon the theatre and drama, 
there are courses offered for her study — plays 
by college girls are given a hearty welcome, and 
are judged sympathetically as candidates for 
production — it is not necessary to mention 



A COLLEGE THEATRE 91 

that the club gives unusual chances for the 
actress to try her powers, and for the artist in 
color, light, and line to make experiments. 

And now the glass has revealed the aims of 
the artist of the theatre, has shown us the 
chance for artistic growth, and an audience 
taking a constructive part in the work of a 
theatre. Does it not seem as if the means 
which achieve such results might repay study 
sufficiently to discover what fundamental rules 
they follow ? 

In later chapters I have made use continually 
of the organization of the Idler Club, and so I 
shall not expound every minute cogwheel 
which goes to make the mechanism. It will 
be sufficient to observe here the great principles 
upon which the theatre has been erected, just 
as when we turn to a great world-illustration 
of a community theatre we shall see how those 
same underlying forces have produced the same 
results. 

In the first place, the Idler Club belongs to 
the college. It is the possession of every mem- 
ber of the undergraduate body. The dues are 
low, corresponding exactly to a poll tax, cover- 



92 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

ing necessary expenses. There are no added 
expenses, making unexpected demands. One 
dollar a year covers the course of all the small 
plays. 

The general administration is conducted 
upon the lines of popular representation. 
Every year at the annual meeting, the Club 
chooses its officers — president, vice-president, 
secretary, and treasurer. The president and 
secretary are from the class which will be 
Seniors during their term of office, the vice- 
president will be a Junior, and the treasurer a 
Sophomore. Just when this tradition grew up 
is not certain, but with it came that of progres- 
sion in office, which insures ability in the presi- 
dent to cope with the intricacies of the highly 
organized system of which she is to be head. 
The Sophomore who is elected treasurer will, 
if she prove satisfactory, pass on to the offices 
of vice-president and president in the two en- 
suing years, reelected in each case by the vote 
of all the Club. 

These officers form an Executive Committee 
whose duty it is to control the business and 
social policy of the Club. They are assisted by 



A COLLEGE THEATRE 93 

numerous minor committees, such as the Cos- 
tume Committee, Lights Committee, Scenery 
Committee, Ushers Committee, which are ap- 
pointed by the year, and many other temporary 
ones. These committees are appointed with 
great care, with continual regard for the fact 
that the entire population of the college must 
be permitted to do its part of the work. 

The art administration of the Club, although 
in some cases it may prove to be greatly in- 
fluenced by an individual president, is not in 
the hands of the elected officers, a point which 
is worthy of note. The Dramatic Committee, 
whose duty it is to choose plays and to produce 
them with suitable assistance, is under the 
leadership of a chairman, whose authority may 
well be said to be the final word in the artistic 
locale. The president is a member of the 
committee but not the presiding officer. 

In the Dramatic Committee every other 
quality is sacrificed to artistic efficiency. 
From the Junior class are chosen the two 
most obviously gifted members. The first 
year of service will be their apprenticeship for 
the Senior season, when they will control the 



94 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

policy of the Club, one of them as chairman. 
And every year a third Senior member is 
added, who with the president — member ex 
officio — completes the board of dramatic 
direction. 

Thus has this women's club solved the two 
primary problems which confront democratic 
institutions. It has related itself to the whole 
on the one hand, and on the other to efficient 
management. Socially, politically, and artis- 
tically, the Idler Club fulfills the needs of its 
small world. It is financially self-supporting, 
and more than that, it makes every year a 
present of money to the college. The tug of 
forces is the same in this little "body politic" 
as in more chaotic natural communities of the 
world. But before drawing any parallels, let 
us turn our attention to the outstanding ex- 
ample of a theatre belonging solely to the com- 
munity which has startled and moved the 
whole of civilization. 



CHAPTER VII 

The World's Example of the Community 
Theatre 

In the mountains of Bavaria, far in spirit 
from the sophistication of cities, is a village 
which has given the world its greatest dramatic 
expression of the Christian religion, and the 
strongest evidence of what effect a community 
theatre, in its simple, literal sense, would have 
upon the community. This is no limited group 
of people. This is no brief experiment. Here 
is a village like the others in those mountains, 
and here, over a period covering not a few 
years but twelve generations, has existed a 
community theatre in its pure form. The 
outcome of this long interaction is evident in 
even as superficial a survey as we shall give it 
here. 

The tradition which has come down to us 
from 1633 states that in that year a pestilence 

95 



96 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

raged over the country about Oberammergau. 
The ghastly contagion reached even to the 
village, resulting in eighty-four deaths from 
among its own ranks. The terrified assembly 
which gathered to discuss what must be done 
was closed by a vow to God that if He would 
save the town from the disease, the released 
would act the story of His Passion upon earth, 
in solemn joy, every ten years. From that 
day the plague ceased in Oberammergau. 

Just what part or parts the monks of Ettal 
took in the founding of the Passion Play is not 
known; they have had a hand, it is thought, 
in the play as it now exists. And the gradual 
flowering of the production is lost in the con- 
fusion of truth with myth. But by the year 
1870 the play was of sufficient import to be 
the ground upon which Joseph Maier was 
excused from military service when the Prus- 
sian War interrupted the performances. Lud- 
wig the Second was sufficiently interested to 
grant this immunity and to become a patron 
of the theatre. When peace came, the Passion 
Play was given especially to celebrate the great 
joy of the community. 



THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 97 

The vehicle by which the play is conveyed 
to its audience has kept all these years some- 
thing of the simplicity of that now legendary 
time when it was produced in the church and 
the courtyard. A general committee of nine- 
teen men control the entire preparations, with 
many sub-committees assisting in the manifold 
duties necessary to so vast an undertaking. 
The general committee makes appointments 
and chooses — a solemn matter — the candi- 
dates to play each part. The announcement of 
their decision is accompanied with much sorrow 
and joy, for no person in the village is without 
his ambition. Every girl has hoped to play 
the Virgin Mary : one at least has postponed 
her marriage that she might do so. And when 
Anton Lang was told that the Christus had 
fallen to him, he grew deathly pale before he 
silently left the room where he had been sitting 
with his father. 

Since the world has traced its pathway up 
the steep mountain side to the Passion Play, 
the duties, expenses, and difficulties have in- 
creased. There is a new theatre and more 
splendid costumes. But these gorgeous vest- 



98 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

ments are still made in Oberammergau, the 
actors have not acquired the theatrical device 
of wigs, and the scenery is still repainted at 
home. An amazing amount of simplicity is 
retained. The villagers feel themselves aloof 
from the world. The ravages of Mammon have 
been withstood. Of all the money which pours 
in, none is used for any but the best pur- 
poses : two-thirds, after expenses are paid, is 
divided among the seven hundred actors, in 
proportion to the importance of the class of 
each; the last third goes for the good of the 
entire town, in 1910, for example, to change the 
course of the Ammer, so that its floods might 
not threaten the town. It is easy to see that 
the pecuniary returns are not the motive power, 
when we learn that a man who might have 
made a fortune as an actor was paid £70 as the 
share of the Christus in the last performance. 

The action of the Passion Play has been too 
often detailed to require an account. The 
world is familiar with all the pageant from 
the cannon which calls the audience to Mass in 
the early morning to the chant of joy which 
rises over the Resurrection and Ascension, at 



THE WORLDS EXAMPLE 99 

sundown. The procession of the Chorus 
through the streets, the eight-hour perform- 
ances, the rapt reverence of the audience, and 
the joyous inspiration of the performers, are 
matters of common comment. Whatever the 
play may owe to its predecessor, the Medieval 
Mystery, just how many extraneous events 
have been lopped off in the course of its his- 
tory, it matters only for our discussion that 
the play is a series of events in the life of 
Christ, opening with the triumphant entry 
into Jerusalem, and following the gospel story 
closely. Between these acts or scenes are 
placed tableaux from the Old Testament, pro- 
phetic of the Messiah. And the whole is ac- 
companied by a Chorus which sings incidental 
music, rarely beautiful, not unlike the Greek 
chorus in its function. 

All this ritual is like an echo in the hurried 
modern world ; some lovely relic of fourteenth- 
century Italy, washed high on the mountain 
side by the tide of artistic growth, and treasured 
there in the isolation of its hiding place. The 
church in the village has fostered the forms, 
the music, the unsophisticated religious beliefs. 



100 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

And the school has fed the dramatic progress : 
it has prepared simple peasants to become 
artists. Passionately inspired by the legends 
and ideals of Christianity, they express them 
in work and in living. The delicate wood- 
carving which is still their great industry, has 
persisted through the invasion of the modern 
tourist. How is it to be explained? Is this 
community a phenomenon ? Did nature breed 
only artists here ? Or can it be that the pos- 
session of a burning ideal, not individual, but 
shared by every citizen alike, has transformed 
ordinary Bavarian mountaineers? 

The growth, complex and mysterious in its 
beauty as a spring violet, has pushed its way 
to perfection by processes as natural and uni- 
versal as those through which the violet passed, 
seeking the sun. Its roots deeply penetrate 
the foundation of religion. This is not true 
merely because the Passion Play is a religious 
story : it has been equally true of every drama 
which attained true flowering. Japanese drama 
originated in a charm against Earthquake and 
his fearful power; the Persians based their 
earliest plays upon religious stories ; the Indian 



THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 101 

drama came into being when personages were 
introduced into religious hymns; and the 
Greek — the joy and despair of the world of 
the theatre — kept always in the great moments 
of the world's highest form of drama, its early 
intimate bond with religion. 

The seed which was sown in Oberammergau 
was the crying need of all the community. A 
common fear and its resulting common joy have 
bound the village into a unity which resembles 
the interdependence of an organism. What- 
ever crowds may flock to the theatre on the 
celebration of the festival every tenth year, 
although they bring wealth to the village, 
they are not of as much weight as the little 
circle made by the inhabitants of the town. 
This is the real audience, which watches the 
careful, prayerful preparation of the play from 
day to day, whose highest conception of earthly 
honor is the assumption of the role of the 
Christ, and who, when asked to take their 
play traveling, replied that it would be neces- 
sary to take as well the whole village, and the 
Kofel which guards from year to year both 
village and theatre. Here is perfect unity 



102 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

between players and audience — there are no 
footlights to be crossed in Oberammergau ! 
The artists and the listeners mingle and are 
lost one in the other, in a perfection of 
cooperation. 

In this way the Passion Play and its attend- 
ant secular performances have come to be the 
centre of the life in Oberammergau. They 
form the stem from which spring all other 
activities. Carving, toy-making, and the task 
of the herdsman continue ; but it is the group 
occupation which furnishes the chief interest 
of the villagers. The attainment of eminence 
in the Passion Play is their highest goal; the 
most rigid punishment for an evildoer is the 
expulsion from the common work in it. 

Fraulein Mayer — the Mary Magdalen of the 
last performance — speaks with Oberammergau's 
own voice of what the Passion Play means to 
her people. In a recent letter she writes : 

I am seriously interested in the idea of hav- 
ing the dramatic art introduced into country 
communities. It is no doubt a great educa- 
tional factor, it binds its members in a closer 
union; it is an ideal to which each and every 
one can devote heart and soul. Of course it is 



THE WORLD'S EXAMPLE 103 

the individual that has to act like a stimulant 
and set ambition, love, and enthusiasm on 
fire, for without those three forces, nothing can 
be gained. I will not mention the material 
side of it, for it takes care of itself. 

The Community Theatre in Oberammergau 
is the result of centuries. It is an inborn in- 
heritance which proves the evolution of a steady 
living and growing into their parts. We have 
annual plays, given in our Rehearsal Theatre, 
where children are allowed to act and to give 
self-expression to their interpretation, which of 
course makes the child creative. The director, 
who is also an Oberammergauer (years ago my 
own father supervised the rehearsals and prepa- 
rations for the Passion Play) may reject 
or sanction one's ideas. They follow certain 
tradition. However, one can create one's own 
part, whether in the Passion Play, or in the 
other Plays. 

Since the time of Richard Wagner and Lud- 
wig II, King of Bavaria, the drama has 
flourished not merely in the city but to a great 
extent in the country, where, as is the case 
with my own village, we get the benefit out of 
the high artistic reproductions of the theatre in 
Munich. 

Drama and Music go hand in hand, and the 
people love to cultivate these Muses. 

And Fraulein Mayer is not alone in feeling 
that the Passion Play, the Community Theatre 
in Oberammergau, as she calls it, is the cause 



104 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

of the uniqueness, rather than the result of any 
unusual gift in the mountain stock. Mr. 
William T. Stead wrote with no little emotion, 
in the guide book which he made for travelers 
to the Passion Play, of the life in the village 
when the curious outside world had ebbed back 
down the mountain side. His words are a 
fitting close to our discussion. 

"Their royal robes laid aside," he said, 
"they go about their ordinary work in the 
ordinary way as ordinary mortals. But what 
a revelation it is of latent capacity, musical, 
dramatic, and intellectual, in the human race, 
that a single mountain village can furnish under 
capable guidance, and with adequate inspira- 
tion, such a host, competent to set forth such 
a play, from its herders, tailors, ploughmen, 
bakers, and the like. It is not native capacity 
that is lacking to mankind. It is the guiding 
brain, the patient love, the careful education, 
the stimulus and inspiration of a great idea. 
But given these, every village from Dorset to 
Caithness might develop artists as noble and 
devoted as those of Oberammergau." 



CHAPTER VIII 

What the Theatre Offers 

Institutions of democracy are distinguished 
by the fact that they possess the power to per- 
petuate and perfect themselves while they give 
the greatest amount of freedom for develop- 
ment to the individuals of which they are com- 
posed. The theatre is preeminent among the 
arts in those qualities which fit it for establish- 
ment upon a basis of democracy. For, unlike 
painting or sculpture, the theatre is a complex 
art. It is a composite created by uniting and 
harmonizing the labor of all the arts. 

No one is excluded from the theatre. Here 
is a workshop for every kind of workman. 
The impulse of imitation, the instinct of rep- 
resentation, upon which Aristotle based his 
theories of art in the Poetics, may here find a 
place to grow, not only in their greatest but in 
their humblest manifestations. It is not easy 

105 



106 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

to confine the desire to create within limits. 
The expression of the imitative faculty often is 
remote from what we are accustomed to think 
of as creation. Clearly it is this impulse which 
causes the little girl to mark out with stones 
the rooms of her "house" under the big tree 
in her back yard, before she calls to "Mrs. 
Robinson 5 ' to come over the fence and pay her 
a visit. From similar stirrings rises the fascina- 
tion which a little boy in his nursery finds in 
building him a cathedral of blocks — "but not 
quite like the picture, Mother!" When to 
announce a royal approach in a school pageant, 
a gawky boy is changed for the moment of his 
difficult trumpeting into a Herald of the King, 
the charm is due to the magic of the impulse 
to create. But these cases are obvious. 
Clearly such impulses are trained and led 
through the art of the theatre. It is of more 
obscure instances that it is necessary to speak. 
The artist cannot stand alone in the theatre. 
He is dependent upon a host of other workers. 
It does not take a specially trained or gifted 
person to set up a proper range in a New 
England kitchen, but in that act one worker 



WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 107 

may find as much satisfaction for his impulse 
to create as another would find in the playing 
>l Hamlet. There are innumerable little tasks 
about the production of every play which 
must be accomplished and which with proper 
care can be made to do the double duty of 
serving the theatre and the one who undertakes 
them. A doorbell must ring at the right 
moment — who will press the button ? Why 
not the boy who tinkers with old electric bat- 
teries at home and who could never do anything 
else in the theatre because he is too shy? A 
pane of glass must crash to the floor outside 
the door to make it seem that windows are 
being broken — what a chance for the boy 
who is destructive and likes to break glass ! 
Bring him in and make his desire to smash 
constructive in spite of him. A mysterious 
gray figure must slip across the open doorway 
in the twilight : surely this is an excellent op- 
portunity for the little trembling grandmother 
who has longed for years to act on the stage, 
but who is not able to do more, since the 
habit of her life prevents her. It is easy to 
conjure up the picture she w^ould make, 



108 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

wrapped in a long robe, faltering with anxiety 
and desire suddenly attainable, flushed witl 
pardonable pride when the escapade was over . 
Moreover, there are frocks to be shortened, 
delicate draperies to fashion, letters which 
must be written and sealed with a splotch of 
sealing wax. The writer remembers still what 
energy and care she once put into such a docu- 
ment, and the pleasure which filled her when 
the chief actor nonchalantly broke it open ! 

Closely allied to the creative force behind 
these details is the energy w T hich we call execu- 
tive ability. The power to arrange and to 
organize takes the place in certain gifted people 
of the desire to make things. It is a necessary 
quality, and one which will find outlet through 
the community theatre. For the theatre, in 
order that it produce the most finished plays 
and that it give as much joy as possible to the 
community, will require every ounce of organ- 
izing power within its scope. The machinery 
of the theatrical factory is complicated : it 
demands attention in every great and less 
degree. The control of the audience is an 
important branch : the theatre should know 



WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 109 

the feelings and hopes of its body. Moreover 
the physical facts of production are made easy 
by classification and arrangement : costumes, 
wigs, and properties should be in careful order 
and under the charge of trained workers. 
The system of seating must be invented and 
managed by a corps of efficient ushers. And 
with every performance new problems will 
arise to tax the ingenuity of the orderly mind. 

The community is not to be, in the theatre, 
like the same community in its park outside. 
The community theatre will gather a collection 
of heterogeneous units, but it will mold them 
into one whole. The community in the park 
has nothing further in common than such 
advantages as are offered by a common locality : 
in the theatre it is to work together, it is to 
play together : to feel as one individual, to 
share its laughter and its tears. 

The theatre is peculiarly adapted to serve 
as a common interest for a diverse community. 
It has something of the emotional and under- 
lying quality of religion, without the dogmatic 
and metaphysical limitations of the Church. 
It can express the beauty which religion in 



110 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

every form is expressing, without exciting the 
antagonism which follows the intricate argu- 
ment dependent upon creeds. The theatre can 
join the Church, and, beyond, can gather to 
itself the social, lay endeavors, making them 
one. Even the most Quakerish dissenters 
from the evils of "play-acting" may be won 
over with tact. The experience of playground 
directors demonstrates how prejudice may be 
circumvented. Many recreation centres have 
met with opposition so vigorous that it seemed 
a menace to their lives when they suggested the 
introduction of folk dancing into the routine. 
Yet the evident value of the rhythm and 
vitality which are the chief characteristics of 
the dances made strategy worth while. There- 
fore the youngsters in those protesting vicinities 
have been sent home talking of "fancy steps", 
and in due time the most violent opposers 
have joined in the general applause at the 
exhibitions of their skill ! 

Too much stress cannot be put upon the 
value of the community theatre in providing a 
common cause for a community. Our com- 
mercially organized society has distorted values 



WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 111 

by a continued emphasis upon the ability to 
grasp until we have lost enthusiasm for the 
power to give. In the community theatre we 
are as individuals less concerned with snatch- 
ing away something for selfish ends than we 
are with contributing to the store of common 
beauty. The qualities which are most in play 
will be the altruistic attributes. To refer once 
more to Fraulein Mayer's phrasing, the theatre 
is, as she says, "an ideal to which each and 
every one can devote heart and soul." 

The community in the theatre falls into 
three distinct groups, or better, into three 
aspects, for the group is persistently the whole 
community. There is the audience as a whole, 
that personalized assembly whose thought the 
artist of the theatre strives to vitalize. 
Secondly, there is the artist group, the divi- 
sion which includes in a sense the least member 
of the audience, but which has a kernel in those 
gifted ones to whom the artistic control will 
be delegated. And lastly there are the 
workers whose activities are in every branch 
of executive management, and the multitudi- 
nous necessary duties of production. In each 



112 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

aspect the theatre offers great benefits to the 
audience. 

As a whole the community audience receives 
an intelligent relaxation to beguile its leisure 
hours. This house of play is the property of the 
whole community. It is based upon an intel- 
lectual cornerstone, and is constantly changing. 
It offers recreation, the relief and revivifying of 
faculties fagged with labor : it offers amusement, 
and one of its basic principles should be to make 
that amusement coincide with the desire of the 
audience. For the audience is its cause for 
existence and its excuse for continuance. 

Entertainment will be its primary aim : to 
divert and to serve as a pastime will be its 
first duty. But because the audience is to be 
an active and not an inert recipient of this 
entertainment, and because every kind of in- 
fluence will be given a chance to exert itself, 
the quality of the theatre's products is bound 
to improve. It may do so very slowly; but 
it is a curious fact that human beings, by doing 
one thing well, learn to appreciate the intrinsic 
value of another thing well done, and growth is 
inevitable. 



WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 113 

After it is amused, then, the audience may 
find an intellectual stimulus in its theatre. 
The leisure of such a community becomes, in 
Mr. MacKaye's vivid phrase, "a constructive 
leisure/' The art of the theatre is, like all 
arts, based upon the emotions of the human 
race, and is expressed through the limitations 
of the human intellect. The most primitive 
member of the community is moved by the ap- 
peal to his emotions, but step by step the 
superimposing of an intellectual appeal has its 
effect until the form and the expression also 
have weight. This feeling for form is the 
beginning of the education of the audience. 
The theatre now becomes an intellectual as 
well as a sensuous pleasure; it satisfies the 
cravings of the mind as well as the desire for 
rest and relaxation. And with the birth of an 
intellectual interest comes also a broadening 
and a stimulation of taste. 

But all these things are slow processes. 
The audience learns through its participation 
in the work of the theatre, through the con- 
stantly changing demands of the theatre, the 
work on committees and the art interpretation. 



114 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

The association with great works of art is in 
itself a stimulation, but such works of art can- 
not be used to the exclusion of less admirable 
ones for reasons of policy and practical common 
sense. 

To those members of the community whose 
life is to be spent in the world of art the theatre 
opens its arms. In organization, in execution, 
in the details of financial management, even 
in the humanitarian sciences, the theatre offers 
opportunities; but these are not gifts which 
can be found in no other place. Public offices 
unconnected with art are rich in them. But 
the artist is handicapped : our present society 
offers him no studio under the cold north light 
of which he may test his visions and discard 
them for fresh ones. The theatre gives him 
that studio. It is — odious as the w T ord often 
seems — a school for artists. 

No artist is forgotten : the work of each is 
equally welcome. The musician as well as the 
actor; the playwright, poet, and composer 
alike; the dancer and the mimic; the archi- 
tect and the sculptor, the painter with his 
palette on his arm — each and every one has 



WHAT THE THEATRE OFFERS 115 

his niche. They are marshalled in comrade- 
ship : they lean one upon the other : now one 
shall claim the chief importance, the stage's 
centre, and now another. The arts in the 
theatre shall rediscover the old interdependence. 

It may well be said that already interaction 
and interdependence have been established in 
the commercial theatre. That is true, but true 
only in a limited sense, for the restraint exer- 
cised by the precariousness of the theatrical 
profession disturbs the perfect balance. The 
mingling of the arts is vital, but not so vital 
as the existence of a true public, a living, breath- 
ing audience. 

This new audience is not to be a precious 
body. It is not a set of dilettante sensation 
seekers. It has normal reactions and a keen 
interest which is practical and immediate. 
Here is some one to listen to what the artist 
has to say — not to listen curiously as to some 
oddity in a museum, but to give him quiet at- 
tention. The artist will not complain because 
flaws are found in his work : he will take the 
condemnation of his color-values, the discovery 
of limping lines in his blank verse, and the 



116 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

shocked faces at his disharmonies, with glow- 
ing pride because he has the real eye, ear, and 
mind, of real people. Then the makers of 
beauty may flourish among us as natural 
creatures instead of anomalies, and art come 
into its own. 

After all, the sum of what the theatre offers 
to the artist lies rather in the reinstatement of 
art than in his personal acquisition. By the 
establishment of the theatre in the community 
as common property, by assembling the forces 
of the people for general good, the arts which 
are the fruits of the endeavor become objects 
of civic admiration. We are a puritanical 
country. How often do we stumble on proofs 
of it ! We are shy of what appeals strongly to 
our senses. We feel an uneasiness in the 
presence of art : we distrust it as a life force. 
But in the community theatre there is a chance 
for art to bloom under the eye of the whole 
people, to answer the crying need. In the 
community theatre a universal recognition of 
art becomes not only possible but inevitable. 
This is the great gift of the community theatre 
to the artist — and to all the people. 



CHAPTER IX 

How Shall We Organize? 

To all who wish to organize a theatre in 
their community it is necessary to say only, 
" Begin." Begin now. If three people and 
no more are ready, let two of them act for the 
joy of the third ! Do not wait for a theatre, but 
make a barn the playhouse, and give an out-of- 
door play in the summer sunshine of late June. 
Turn the porch into a stage, or let a parlor serve 
the purpose to an auditorium adjoining from 
which the dining table has been temporarily 
removed. The Passion Play of Oberammergau 
was first given in the church of the village, and 
the Abbey Theatre was made from a morgue ! 

If there be a village green, why not begin with 
a pageant there ? It will help advertise. Let 
half-hearted believers be shown the flash of 
color and the stately movement as the town's 
most distinguished ancestor enacts for them 

117 



118 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

his most historic deeds : few will remain half- 
hearted after they have watched the stirring 
spectacle. First of all, let there be a living 
spirit. If that spirit exists, if the desire be 
alive — no matter how insignificant the spark 
— tasks Herculean in size may be brought to 
completion. 

Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has long been an 
advocate of the theatre as an established State 
institution. No other person has tried so hard 
to found a National Theatre in England. But 
of all that he has said and written, a statement 
made before the Harvard Dramatic Club, some 
five years ago, has impressed itself most vividly 
upon my memory. "The theatre needs," said 
Mr. Jones, "not great monuments like the New 
Theatre in New York City, but teachers, 
enthusiasts, Saint Pauls of the Drama. 9 ' Such 
apostles of the theatre may work wherever 
they may be : certainly the Christian religion 
did not demand a cathedral for its early prac- 
tice ! 

It is equally unnecessary to wait for money. 
Do not worry about luxuries; begin without a 
penny. The original endowment of the Abbey 



HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 119 

Theatre was notoriously ten guineas. Poverty, 
when it does not entail hunger, serves as an 
invigoration. The theatre without money will 
be limited, but not in its capacity for growth. 
Every device of ingenuity which the moneyless 
theatre employs will increase the wealth of that 
theatre a thousandfold. The theatrical pro- 
fession has been taught a great lesson about 
expenditure. New York productions — and 
many others as well — were challenged by the 
artistic excellence of the Portmanteau Theatre 
under Mr. Stuart Walker's direction. Yet in 
his introduction to "Portmanteau Plays", 
Mr. Edward Bierstadt asserts that money was 
a force almost negligible in the Portmanteau 
campaign. Mr. Walker found no lack of 
enthusiasm for a play, the cost of which was 
actually not one cent : on the contrary, its 
success equalled his most expensive produc- 
tion, the play upon which he lavished fifteen 
hundred dollars. However, to the Broadway 
producer it does not seem more astounding 
that a play which cost nothing should succeed 
than that any play could be staged with an 
expenditure of only fifteen hundred dollars ! 



120 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

For upon Broadway men think in thousands 
of dollars : it is inconceivable that the theatre 
should be established (as Mr. Walker's was) 
with only three thousand dollars capital and 
the vital energy of young enthusiasm. 

The spirit which is not thinking of money is 
clearly shown in Oberammergau. Fraulein 
Mayer writes simply, "I will not mention the 
material side of it for it takes care of itself." 
She speaks a great truth : the community 
theatre which will be the greatest success is 
not the one which begins with the largest pres- 
ent of money, but the one where the spirit of 
cooperation and fellowship is thriving most 
vigorously. 

Begin at once with the two or three members 
whose faith is strong. But begin upon a 
strong foundation of fellowship. Let no limits 
be set upon the membership : make the theatre 
as wide as the community. Do not allow what 
seems like the promise of an immediate growth 
to limit and narrow the most valuable asset a 
theatre can have. In a village every member 
— every inhabitant — should be included: 
neither youth nor age should be cause for ex- 



HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 121 

eluding an interested candidate. The doors 
of the theatre should always swing wide open 
to the magic of the word "willing." At first 
it will be possible to include only those who 
come of their own desire ; when the theatre 
has been firmly established, when it actually 
belongs to all the community, the recalcitrants 
will be dragged in by the tug of public opinion. 
But in the beginning it will be well to let the 
members feel that he who comes must bring 
a gift, that any gift, however small, is wel- 
comed, and that every member of the theatre 
groups will share equally in all the privileges 
of the theatre. 

Membership in the community theatre 
should never be limited except by the limits of 
the community. Individual cases will expound 
peculiar problems. The age limit is one which 
is common to all theatres, and which will be 
variously solved. To exclude children and 
growing boys and girls seems not only unkind 
to them, but also unwise from every angle from 
which it can be considered. It would naturally 
deprive the theatre of valuable material. At 
the same time it would also take away some- 



122 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

thing which the children could get in no other 
way — the joy of guided self-expression, the 
possibility of cooperative work, and an interest 
at once intellectual and amusing. 

However, in every theatre it may not be 
possible to include all children, and in that case, 
a children's supplementary organization, which 
could be formed, wx>uld serve as a feeder for 
the grown-up theatre. A play given by both 
these once a year will offer an interesting ex- 
change of ideas. 

Membership, then, is not to be limited except 
by residence in the actual group. Villages 
which have to meet the question of summer 
colonists will certainly not exclude them, but 
will take care not to let a part assume the re- 
sponsibilities and the benefits of the whole. 
Summer visitors will prove helpful : there no 
doubt will be gifted and able individuals 
among them; but they must not carry off all 
the honors. The theatre must let the "summer 
people n speak, but must not aim to lisp only 
in their words. 

Closely associated with membership is the 
question of dues — of the taxation upon which 



HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 123 

the first financial endowment of the theatre 
is to depend. This should be small, indeed 
purely nominal, as the poll tax is nominal 
— something which every one must and can 
pay. There should be nothing resembling the 
old initiation fee of a dramatic club. The sum, 
of course, must be set to accord with the needs 
and financial vision of the people : a dollar 
is by no means a fixed sum; there are places 
which regard it as negligible and others where 
its value is tremendous. In country towns 
where barter still persists the fact that the 
theatrical tax was one dollar a year might 
keep many members from "joining." 

Montclair, New Jersey, has established 
during the past year a theatre whose ideals of 
membership and whose general policy are in 
accordance with the strictest community 
theatre demands. In Montclair every one is 
welcomed into the theatre: during the few 
months of its existence, the number of members 
has passed two hundred and fifty, if not at this 
time three hundred. The dues are fifty cents 
a ' year — moderate certainly, for a township 
which is usually considered a rich one. This 



124 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

membership, however, does not admit to all 
performances of the theatre, to which tickets 
are sold at a basic price of twenty-five cents 
each ; but does give one the entree to a special 
performance at the end of the season, to which 
no seats are sold. 

This plan seems not so wise as the one of 
having a larger tax, and giving more definite 
meaning to its payment. Why not charge a 
dollar and exclude from acting and from the 
usual programme of plays all people who are 
not members ? Let the membership committee 
be composed of tactful and thoughtful people : 
should any candidate appear whose inability 
to pay a dollar was evident, let proper means 
for the earning of that dollar be provided. If 
necessary, have the payment of the dollar in 
two parts; but let the dues cover the expenses 
of the year's list of plays. And, instead of one 
play to which only members and their invited 
guests may come, why not have one or two 
plays, widely advertised and produced with 
great care, to which the world is bidden ? They 
will increase membership and the money in 
the treasury. 



HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 125 

It may be said that the first plan, the pay- 
ment of a small tax and of letting non-members 
as well as members see all the plays and act 
whatever parts they can, is broader and more 
truly democratic. On the contrary, it seems 
to me that it is necessary everywhere in life to 
lay equal emphasis upon privilege and re- 
sponsibility. The theatre needs the dignity of 
a social recognition as much as it needs the 
money which increased membership will bring: 
the membership should therefore have a defi- 
nite meaning and should be defined by a 
clearly drawn line. Those outside that line 
should not share the advantages of those 
inside, but no one should be kept outside 
arbitrarily. 

However small the actual number of 
members which forms the nucleus of the 
community theatre, it will be well from the 
first to make it assume the outlines of a demo- 
cratic government. It may be that some more 
fortunate form of government, lacking the 
defects which are so clearly recognizable in 
the practice of democracy, the faults of wire- 
pulling and politics and inefficiency, some form 



126 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

of government with less discrepancy between 
the ideal and the exercise of the function, may 
be discovered by our children's children. In the 
meantime, however, we are accustomed to the 
device of popular representation : it is a con- 
trivance which seems natural. From the be- 
ginning, it will be well to let every member of 
the audience feel his own authority by sub- 
mitting the choice of the executive staff to a 
popular vote. 

Such a course meets at once two major 
objections : officers chosen by vote are not 
necessarily the most efficient candidates, and 
the audience-body is not necessarily the best 
judge of things artistic; it will be more likely 
to elect its officers upon a basis of political popu- 
larity. These two fundamental difficulties 
must be dealt with by a limitation of the power 
of each office rather than by any restriction of 
the power of choice conferred upon the audience. 
The direction of the art policy will have to be 
organized carefully, guarding against placing 
too much power in the hands of an officer 
liable to be influenced by politics: the whole 
must be delicately adjusted to suit the needs of 



HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 127 

the audience as well as those of the most favor- 
able art conditions. 

The president, vice-president, secretary, and 
treasurer, may be elected by the audience. 
The pull of politics will no doubt be evident 
at once : parties will form, perhaps, one leaning 
towards a definite art policy, and one strongly 
in favor of popular control at the expense of 
artistic achievement. But these two parties 
are best calculated to make the theatre an 
answer to the dreams of both its founders. 
Neither the aims of the artist of the theatre, 
nor those of the social scientist will be wholly 
neglected through an over-attention to the 
claims of the other; a proper balance will be 
maintained, not the result of inertia, but the 
vital balance which comes from the opposition 
of strong forces. 

To add to the efficiency of the executive 
corps some form of progression in office may be 
adapted to each community. In a town made 
up of every kind of person, the simple method 
which the Idler Club has developed at Rad- 
cliffe College would prove too obvious. Be- 
sides, it might be difficult to find a person 



128 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

who could sacrifice so much time to the theatre 
for three or four consecutive years. If, how- 
ever, the officers be elected from those who have 
served upon one of the numerous committees 
of management (which will be treated in detail 
at a later point), and if the chief executive 
must be elected from the officers of the pre- 
vious year, it will accomplish much the same 
results. No executive officer will come to his 
post without training of some sort in the 
practical work "behind the scenes 55 ; and the 
presiding officer, during two years of service, 
will have learned the details of his machinery, 
its powers and its limitations. 

The president's chief qualification should 
be rather for execution of practical detail 
than for art creation in the theatre. The 
director of the art policy should not be a person 
who is chosen by the vote of the audience: 
his characteristics are rarely those which would 
make him sufficiently popular to win him an 
election. The art direction should be removed 
as far as possible from the effects of politics : 
the management should lie in the hands of an 
appointed officer. His appointment must not 



HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 129 

rest in the hands of one person, but should be 
subject to the approval of several : the presi- 
dent who is entering office, taking counsel with 
the retiring president and with the art director 
of the previous year, and limited somewhat in 
his action by their opinions, might control 
the decision. The committee which with the 
director is to execute the art policy w^ill in turn 
be chosen by the new director and the new 
president, still advised by the experienced 
officers of the former year. 

The matter of the term of service for a 
director is another point which must be 
differently decided in different localities. No 
doubt at first there may be one person who 
stands out as preeminently the director. It 
would be unwise to put into the office people 
utterly unfit for its duties simply because of a 
rule that the director must change every twelve 
months. Indeed, I am inclined to the belief 
that a longer term of office will prove more 
satisfactory. On the other hand, there is 
danger in one person's too steady control of 
the art policy : terms of office should not be 
unlimited. And from the committee under the 



130 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

director there will come candidates filled with 
promise and fresh ideas. 

These chief officers then, the president, the 
vice-president, the secretary, and the treas- 
urer, form the Executive Committee. They will 
control broadly the plans of the theatre and 
its general management. In their turn they 
will be assisted and supported by a large number 
of minor committees, appointed and reinforced 
every year, which carry on the difficult special 
services of the ordinary running of a theatre. 
The art director with his committee will pro- 
duce, stage, and coach the actors of every 
production. He will, moreover, read the plays, 
with the assistance of the Play-reading Com- 
mittee, and choose his programme. For his 
assistance there will be maintained a Com- 
mittee on Costumes, a Committee on Settings, 
a Committee on Lighting, a Committee on Wigs 
and Hairdressing, and a Committee on Prop- 
erties. These specialized groups will be able 
to tell him exactly what exists in the stock of 
the theatre, and will arrange that he gets what- 
ever he needs. Their duties and their train- 
ing will be examined in the next chapter. 



HOW SHALL WE ORGANIZE? 131 

Thus, with a careful protection of the art 
direction, and the limitation of the powers of 
the executives who depend directly upon 
popular election for their offices, it will be 
possible to establish a system of checks and 
counter forces upon the whimsical will of a 
democratic control. And although when the 
organization is founded with a small circle 
only — the two or three members mentioned 
at the beginning of this chapter — it will not 
be possible to follow so elaborate an arrange- 
ment, the details may well be kept in mind, 
for the growth will be rapid, and the need for a 
fair assignment of duties will promptly be 
forced upon the organizers. 



CHAPTER X 

What Can Be Done with Little 

Technology of production in the theatre is 
not the concern of these chapters. It belongs 
rather to each individual who will find himself 
in control of the artistic problems. But there 
are certain experiences which taken in conjunc- 
tion are an argument against those members of 
the theatrical profession who feel the need for 
great sums of money in the launching of any 
theatrical enterprise. It is possible to create 
fine stage effects with only the smallest re- 
sources. 

A number of books upon the new theories 
of stage decoration are named in the Appendix. 
They dwell upon the importance of eliminating 
details and speak at length upon abstract 
questions: they are valuable to the student 
and to the would-be producer. Design, color, 
light and shade, contrast, spirit, and mood of 

132 



THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 133 

the play and of the scene, are details that 
demand an ultimate attention ; but it is much 
more likely that the first question the director 
will have to meet will have a more pressing 
form. He will not be asked for a solution to 
any problem in theoretic design : he will be 
importuned to make a garden which shall 
satisfy every one. And can a garden be made 
without money ? 

There is little an artist cannot do when 
cornered. I remember, in the whitewashed 
basement room which served for an atelier for 
the scene painter of the 47 Workshop at Har- 
vard, watching the final strokes put on a 
fountain. Two paint-daubed workmen hung 
over it. They gloated over the tiny thread 
which silvered into the basin. Even in the 
harshness of the daylight the painted wood 
and canvas looked like a relic of Medieval 
Italy. Under lights it took on a far-away 
reality : the silver ribbon purred caressingly 
against the distorted gray-green mouth. Yet 
to the artist and his turpentine scented assist- 
ant the chief factor of the triumph lay in the 
origin of the grinning face and the hollow bowl. 



134 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

The humble beginnings of that Italian foun- 
tain were a child's Santa Claus "false face", a 
wooden chopping bowl — deftly sawed into 
shape — and a bit of tarnished silver braid. 

The statement that economy and great art 
are inseparable has become platitudinous. 
The worker in the arts should not feel stinted, 
but he should be convinced that he must avoid 
effort — effort in his materials, effort in his 
thought, and effort in his methods. There 
must be exertion and struggle, but the result 
of the labor should be so simple and so natural 
that it seems wholly effortless. Again and 
again there are two possible ways of expressing 
an idea — the simple way and the complex or 
sophisticated one. It has been a fault of our 
theatre that it too often takes the complicated 
rather than the straightforward way. 

Elsewhere I have spoken of Mr. Stuart 
Walker's Portmanteau Theatre. The require- 
ments of Mr. Walker's stage are such that he 
has been forced to employ the most simple 
means, even had he not been drawn to simple 
things by his tastes. The photograph of The 
Seven Gifts, the Pantomime which the Port- 



THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 135 

inanteau Players gave in Madison Square, 
shows how simple a picture may be without 
losing anything of loveliness. The unaffected- 
ness of the design, the repose of the figures, 
and the elimination of every unnecessary 
detail, are characteristic of Mr. Walker's work. 
He drops his deep blue curtains, moves a table 
and twT> whimsical chairs to his forestage, and, 
behold, we are in "a room just up-stairs." Or, 
with a soap box and a generous supply of 
imagination, he turns that same forestage for 
us into the bank of a river. 

The primary (or I might have said, kinder- 
garten) productions which I have mentioned 
may teach much to the beginner in the theatre. 
(To follow Mr. Walker's more venturesome 
flights would require his trained corps of 
artists.) There are many plays which can be 
staged amusingly without expenditure of 
money, if only thought and skill are available. 

One small stage with which I have been long 
familiar was built by an architect whose ideals 
aimed at stability rather than pliability. The 
walls are inexorably plastered and painted. 
Out-of-door scenes are often the despair of the 



136 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

producer ; but, making a virtue of its weakness, 
he continually used the stage as an interior 
with telling effect. Panels of wall paper ap- 
plied with thumb tacks changed the room from 
a New England colonial parlor to a Louis XVI 
boudoir, at a cost which was utterly negligible. 
Or again, with a hanging of inexpensive chintz^ 
it became a modern English drawing-room. 
And the wall paper as well as the chintz could 
be rolled up and packed away in a small space 
when not in use. 

The use of screens and of hangings has totally 
altered our ideas of stage illusion. It is not 
necessary that every least can of sardines be 
in place, in staging a scene in a grocery store. 
The shop may be as living and as spiritually 
true when it is made of a deal table, a row of 
woodeu boxes which have cranberries and 
carrots peeping out, and a tall bucket or so 
in the background. A beautifully embroidered 
scarf hanging on a dark screen may change a 
bleak hall into a regal throne-room, and long 
soft curtains may be turned into a forest, a 
peasant's hut, or a lady's chamber by the use 
of a single property in each separate scene : by 



THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 137 

the adroit placing of shadows to simulate the 
woods, by the rough hewn bench of the peas- 
ant, and by the delicate prie-dieu with a 
scarlet cushion upon which the lady kneels. 

The same property may be used again and 
again. In the property room of the Idler Club 
is a silvery whistle which was originally ac- 
quired to indicate the passing of the midnight 
flier. It tooted much like a locomotive and 
sent little chills down the backs of the listeners. 
But since that day the gleam of that whistle 
has served many a purpose. Once it was the 
flashing revolver which kept the villain at 
bay until the hero arrived to clasp the fainting 
heroine : again it was valuable family silver, 
looted by burglars from the safe : it whistled 
outside for everything from a tugboat to a 
policeman : it was a toy in the nursery and 
part of a soldier's equipment. The cost of 
the whistle was twenty-five cents, eight years 
ago : it is as fresh and energetic, as shrill 
and ear splitting to-day as it was the day it 
was triumphantly unwrapped for the admiring 
ears of the greenroom assembled ! 

The Chinese Lantern bv Lawrence Housman 



138 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

suggests endless trains of thought in the psy- 
chology of stage illusion. In China the 
heaviest carved furniture is in use. The 
houses are not, like those in Japan, built of 
paper. People do not sit on the floor. And 
yet Mr. Housman has given directions for all 
these things, and when under the inspired 
direction of Mr. Sam Hume, the play was 
produced in Cambridge, friends of the author, 
who had lived for twenty years in China, could 
not say too emphatically that it was exquisitely 
Chinese. The color and the light which played 
against the soft-tinted, glazed background 
followed the emotion of the play step by step, 
and wove into its texture a faint Orientalism, 
as delicate and fanciful as a dream. Only the 
slightest suggestion of the charm of the staging 
can be found in the photograph of the set, by 
Mr. Hume and Mr. Gardner Hale, which is 
shown on the opposite page. 

Every one has been astonished at some time 
by the marvel of a simple charade, by the in- 
finite variety of a table cover, and the charm of 
a garment worn upside down. One member 
of a family assumes a strange wild aspect when 



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THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 139 

he is dressed in the garments of another : a 
collar and black coat put on backwards quickly 
change the enfant terrible into churchly solem- 
nity. There is little difference in producing a 
vast spectacle : the proportions are larger, but 
the elements remain the same. 

Costuming a play is a much simpler matter 
than many people suppose. It is not necessary 
to consult a costumer, to hire elaborate hideous- 
ness ; it is not even necessary to buy expensive 
materials. From attics and old trunks the 
most amazing treasures may be dragged to 
light. Old evening frocks can be altered in the 
twinkling of an eye by a free use of safety pins 
to almost any picturesque period. A beaver 
hat is sure to lurk in an unexpected corner. 
An ancient military cloak will shake out the 
scent of old romance from its folds along with 
the flutter of dust and moths. The pretty 
paraphernalia of our grandmothers, the fans, 
the high-heeled slippers, the quaint coquettish 
sunshades, need not remain in seclusion. They 
should take their proper places. 

When the first Peterborough Pageant was 
produced in memory of Mr. Edward Mac- 



140 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

Dowell, Professor George P. Baker and the 
Committee were at a loss where to find hoops 
and the calico prints which were needed to make 
the Civil War scene — to be played in the plain 
light of day — untheatric and real. Professor 
Baker delights in relating how he found 
everything, even the hoops, packed away in 
the dingy recesses of the village shop : and he 
adds, with a twinkle of humor, that the store- 
keeper was finally prevailed upon to sell them 
at less than the wartime prices ! 

The most impressive Morocco who ever sued 
for Portia 9 s hand wore a costume which could 
be duplicated by the skilful draping of a linen 
sheet, and the apt twist of a Turkish bath towel. 
It was straight and long and princely : its 
whiteness threw into fatal relief the mahogany 
of the Oriental skin. The audience felt with 
the lady the little shudder of racial mistrust 
even while it drew a quicker breath at the 
startling beauty of the suitor. 

Many years ago I was present at the pro- 
duction of a nursery play which well might 
have been called "The Exploits of an Apron.' 9 
There were other actors, but through five 



THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 141 

acts the apron — the full white apron such as 
nurses wear over comfortable laps — made its 
entrances and exits. There was no act in 
which it did not vary its performance : there 
was no single scene in which it did not appear. 
In the first act it was a plain apron, spreading 
its whiteness over the knees of the nurse of the 
heroine; no sooner was the curtain up on act 
two than the apron was discovered suspended 
round the neck of the hero — a simple valiant 
butcher boy; the third act, by skilful manip- 
ulation, used it for a court train at a ball; 
in the fourth it was draped about a large doll 
who interpreted the part of a foundling, and 
in the last it framed the heroine's sad face, as 
she droopingly sought the haven of a convent, 
serving as wimple and as coif at once. And, 
like many stories of childhood and of children, 
the memory of that apron seems to me less 
an anecdote than a parable. It carries much 
instruction for the costumer. 

Elaboration of detail and the expenditure of 
large sums of money are not indispensable. 
Out-of-door plays may be staged simply and 
without much money. It is not necessary to 



142 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

have an expensive stage. It may be that the 
Town Hall was built upon Doric lines, or that 
some generous inhabitant of your village has a 
lovely sloping orchard — they will serve the 
purpose of a setting for beauty. Use what is 
at hand thoughtfully and with taste: the 
result will be satisfying. 

It cannot be reiterated too often, "Make use 
of what you have." Look upon everything as 
possible theatrical material. There will appear 
many strange new lights upon old objects. 
This advice is valuable not only in the pro- 
cesses of production, but as well in the choice 
of a theatre, in the selection of casts, and in 
the everyday social routine of the theatre. A 
brief review of the theatres in the Appendix 
will show the variety of the houses of play 
which already exist : schoolhouses, stables, 
the floor of a loft-building, and even a converted 
barroom are among them. Of the last charm- 
ing interior a photograph is included, which is, 
I think, suggestive of much that might be 
done, with its use of old church pews, and 
patchwork curtain. 

Do not overlook the usefulness of the thing 



THE USE OF LITTLE THINGS 143 

that is near you. Keep your productions sane 
and reasonable. Let them be proportionate to 
the surroundings. Do not try to follow in 
detail a production of Henry the Eighth by Sir 
Herbert Tree if your stage is set up shakily 
against the rough timbers of a barn : think 
rather of strolling players and the simplicity 
of the Elizabethan theatre. Remember that 
a production is as much an entity as a sym- 
phony is : carefully eliminate contrasts which 
will bring in discords where there should be 
harmonies. 

But above all it will be the spirit of joy — 
the joy of creation — and the inspiration of 
working together which will contribute most 
to the beauty of the theatre. Do not let that 
precious attribute escape : it is priceless above 
emeralds. With joy and with cooperation, it 
is possible to pass to the uttermost bounds of 
achievement, and the possession of money 
matters very little. 



CHAPTER XI 

Suggestions 

To harmonize and to create a balance between 
the social and the artistic forces in the theatre 
requires the most delicate manipulation. 
Labor — the privilege of service — must be 
so divided that no one is excluded from his 
just proportion. It may be well to consider 
in turn the duties of each office in relation to 
the other cogs in the wheel of production, and 
in relation to the audience-community. 

The Executive Committee is to control the 
general management. It is composed of the 
president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, 
and chairman of the Membership Committee. 
In the earlier days of the theatre, there will be 
more work for the committee as a whole than 
when the routine is established, for it must 
assemble to meet crises, sudden demands of 
this or that party, to discuss the trials of each 

144 



SUGGESTIONS 145 

individual officer, and to knit the tangled 
threads into a smooth and pleasant fabric. 
At all times its function will be to untie knots 
of executive policy. 

The president is, of course, the chief execu- 
tive and the presiding officer, and as such must 
possess qualities of worth in management and 
in meeting people, tact and quick-wittedness, 
directness of thought, and speed in action. 
The president should not be an artist of the 
theatre, primarily; nor is it, on the other 
hand, necessary that this officer be a person 
trained in one of the social sciences, but rather 
a person of average administrative ability 
who has been trained carefully in the minor 
matters, and whose social gift is somewhat 
unusual. The president should be a person 
who has no difficulty in obtaining the vote of 
something over the majority — a good popular 
candidate. The social gift and the background 
of training which make the officer familiar 
with the means of production at his command 
are the most salient characteristics which he 
need possess. 

Unlike most vice-presidents, the vice-presi- 



146 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

dent of our theatre is to be a busy and important 
person. He works behind the scenes however. 
Let him be chairman of the greenroom com- 
mittees. This is in reality the position of 
Chairman of Chairmen, for under him will 
stand in turn the heads of each individual unit 
into which the process of production is divided. 
The vice-president will know what money can 
be spent in the course of the season upon all 
the branches of the greenroom w r ork, he will 
decide how these sums are to be allotted, after 
consultation with the under-chairmen. He is 
the representative of the greenroom in the 
Executive Committee. 

The secretary has obvious duties, as has, 
indeed, the treasurer. In large communities 
they may be given assistants : in small ones the 
duties of both may be consigned to one person, 
or combined with those of the chairman of 
the Membership Committee. This last-named 
official is of vital importance to the newly- 
established theatre, and should be a perfect 
fusion of tact, advertising ability, enthusiasm, 
and intuition! He is the sociological head of 
the theatre, and in his hands should be placed 



SUGGESTIONS 147 

the authority to do all that is possible to en- 
courage the growth of the membership list 
until its compass is the breadth of the com- 
munity. After that, with the help of an effi- 
cient committee, he should keep closely in 
harmony with all the members, acting as a 
thermometer and a barometer for the Executive 
Committee, and the producing staff. 

Of the appointed officers, the director is 
most important. In many cases, some one 
person with appropriate qualifications will 
stand in evident contrast to the rest of the 
community. However, when this is not true, 
the appointee should be skilled in handling 
material, both theatric and human, and should 
have a definite knowledge of the tastes and 
interests of his audience. He should be sup- 
ported by a committee of interested people, 
with a decided gift for the details of actual 
stage work. In the hands of the director's 
committee will rest the production of plays and 
the problems of casting, the "coaching" of 
the actors, and the general artistic oversight 
of the season. 

The minor committees are assembled in 



148 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

ranks under these staff officers. The Com- 
mittee on Costumes will organize and arrange 
costumes, keeping those which are made in a 
suitable order and providing costumes for each 
play as it comes up for consideration. The 
Committee on Make-up will assume the re- 
sponsibility for the wigs and the beards, will 
apply rouge and powder, will become proficient 
in the difficult manipulation of cosmetic. 
Scenery, lights, and properties — each needs 
an able corps for its direction. 

The committees are appointed for the 
season; they work together through a series 
of plays. But at the same time there are 
temporary committees which cooperate with 
them, each serving for one production. If 
there are to be six plays during the season, there 
are six committees, each turning its attention 
to one play. A chairman, with two or three 
assistants, will be sufficient. These temporary 
executives work in direct connection with the 
member of the director's committee who is 
staging the play ; they call upon the permanent 
committees for assistance and for advice. 

When the temporary chairmen are chosen 



SUGGESTIONS 149 

by the Executive Committee, the most careful 
attention should be paid to the advice of the 
chairman of Membership. It will be well in 
choosing them to take prominent persons from 
every faction of the community life and to 
select them with attention to many matters 
beside a gift for the theatre. This serves an 
obvious social purpose, the programme will in- 
terest one and then another subdivision of the 
audience as a whole — the season will belong 
to the entire community. 

The choice of plays demands the careful 
attention not only of a Play-Reading Com- 
mittee, but of every one connected with the 
enterprise. Some one has wisely said that 
Broadway needs play readers no longer be- 
cause even the office boys are reading plays. 
In the community theatre it will be regrettable 
if half the audience is not discovering plays for 
production. While the theatre is a small 
group, this assistance will be all that the 
director and his committee require, but when 
the intricacies of stage direction are multiplied 
by the augmentation of the theatre's size, the 
buffer value of the Play-Reading Committee 



150 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

becomes instantly apparent. By the time the 
membership has reached, say three hundred, 
there will be need of a committee, constantly 
reading, wandering up and down the world 
in search of new material. They serve as the 
beaters in an Indian hunt, to rouse the quarry. 
It is the duty of the director and his com- 
mittee to act the part of the sportsman whose 
shot commits them to production. 

In the Appendix is a list containing several 
books which will be of help in planning balanced 
programmes, or which will offer fields of forage 
for those who are unaccustomed to play reading. 
More than that, the Drama League has much 
to say about courses in reading and the study 
of the drama. These matters will fall naturally 
under the direction of the Play Committee: 
courses in the history and technique of the 
drama will stimulate an interest in the literary 
value of the theatre. Such a branch of the 
theatre's work might well be intrusted to the 
Play-Reading Committee. 

The difficult task of assigning parts — the 
casting of plays — falls, in the last analysis, 
to the director. He is of course open to sugges- 



SUGGESTIONS 151 

tion. And in several well conducted theatres 
it has been found that a system of trials is 
more productive of good actors than any other 
method of filling the parts. At Montclair, 
where the democratic note is vibrant, the 
candidates are tried more or less publicly. Mr. 
Harold Howland writes : 

One of the trial evenings of the Players is 
an attractive occasion. Twenty-five or thirty 
persons sit round informally — the Producing 
Committee, the producer of the Play, candi- 
dates, members of the General Committee. A 
makeshift scene is sketched in with random 
tables and chairs and what not. Two or three 
at a time the aspiring players read short scenes 
from the play as directed by the producers. 
Sometimes the logical players for certain 
parts are apparent without extended hearing. 
Sometimes the casting of a single part requires 
many trials and even the combing of the 
community for the right material. But the 
democratic free-for-all method seems to work. 
Splendid material appears from unexpected 
and unknown quarters. . . . 

The method of trying candidates for each 
play, although undoubtedly superior to that of 
casting by guess or by fancy, has several draw- 
backs. It concentrates competition : there is 



152 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

the danger of hard feeling between the winner 
and the loser. It takes much time : the 
committees must try all comers, and some of 
them will be those who have "tried" for every 
part in the history of the theatre. More- 
over, very talented persons must be dragged 
out to go through the routine with every one. 
It was to offset such economic waste and 
such friction that during my own direction 
of an unimportant organization, I instituted 
annual trials. A certain time was set aside 
for all people who wished to act to appear 
before the judges : scenes from standard plays 
which had variety and range were designated : 
the judges were given pencils and slips of paper. 
Then in careful order, sets of two or three would- 
be actors came and played their scenes. The 
most assiduous notes were made upon each 
performance : the judges consulted together, 
and a list was made in which the limitations 
and possibilities of each performer were set 
forth for future use. This list was to provide 
the casts for the season's productions. 

The concentration of examining the actors 
eliminates the need for repeated trials whenever 



SUGGESTIONS 153 

a new cast is necessary during the busy season ; 
but it will be well to announce fresh ones to 
reinforce the first, as new material arises 
quickly, and the list should be kept vital. 
This list is the community theatre's Stock 
Company. From it — however large it may 
be — the director should choose as many actors 
as possible during the year. In the ideal 
community theatre, every one would be given 
a chance to try everything which he wished 
to do : in that striving limited human version 
which we are forced to organize, it is possible 
to approach the ideal from afar. A girl who 
has nothing to recommend her to the audience 
except a desire to play Ophelia cannot, ob- 
viously, be put into such a part. But she can 
be studied and slipped into a tiny place some- 
where : she can be given the satisfaction of 
feeling that she has played one part : with 
proper training she may even come to larger 
ones. There is a story, much-repeated, that 
one of the most famous of our musicians was 
urged, as a girl, to stop singing because she 
had no voice. 

The sketch permitted by this brief space 



154 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

can do little but outline possible courses of 
action. Every facet of the theatrical gem may 
have unlimited attention. The Music Com- 
mittee advises and provides music : the artists 
are gathered into a studio group : workshop 
opportunities are endless. A large theatre 
may have a library; even the smallest will 
find a bookshop useful in which to offer for 
sale plays old and new during the performances. 
The acting may be regulated by a Trials Com- 
mittee: when the first agony of showing what 
they can and what they cannot do is over, 
let such a committee seize the aspiring actors 
and give them direction in diction, lessons in 
dancing, or courses in pantomime and inter- 
pretation. It is possible to elaborate the 
edifice endlessly. 

The progress of a play through the channels 
of this complicated machinery would happen 
somewhat after this fashion. At the com- 
mencement of the season, the president would 
notify some prominent person that he was 
to have charge of the fifth production. The 
date of his production assigned, he would be 
asked to consider and to submit plays. Mean- 



SUGGESTIONS 155 

time, the director with his committee and the 
Play Committee would also be reading. 

A week before the time for rehearsals to 
begin, the manager would be invited to meet the 
Director's Committee. In this meeting as much 
consideration as seemed compatible with the 
general policy of the year would be shown his 
desires ; he would be consulted in matters of 
the play, the cast, and the selection of artistic 
advisers. But in the final instance, questions 
must be decided by the director. 

Rehearsal of the play would be put into the 
hands of the director's assistant, a member of 
the committee to whom the production came 
in rotation. He will assume responsibility : 
he will discuss the play with the director : he 
will be allowed great freedom in his control, 
and will be led rather than directed. 

The cast will be selected from the acting 
list. It may be that one part or another can- 
not be decided : trials for that part will be 
privately provided to decide it, The cast 
will assemble, and the play will be read to them. 
Certain large lines of its form will be suggested. 
Then they will be expected to study, and at 



156 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

first the director's assistant will allow them 
great liberty in working out their own ideas, 
cutting out only those conceptions w^hich 
make a blatant disharmony with the whole. 

The rehearsing of the play may be done in 
several ways. Every director has his own 
methods. But two things are important : the 
director-in-chief should be the court of last 
resort, and the director's assistant in charge 
should be given great freedom. It is unwise 
to allow promiscuous suggestion from whoso- 
ever happens to be present at a rehearsal. 
All directions should come through the person 
in command. 

As the play progresses, the manager and his 
committee consult the branches of greenroom 
direction. Costumes, scenery, and lighting 
must be thoroughly discussed : experiments 
must be made. If the closets do not contain 
the proper material to twist into use, the studio 
department will be called into play. So it 
goes. On the day of dress rehearsal, all the 
departments will be assembled with pencil 
and with pads, to jot down suggestions for the 
director. 



SUGGESTIONS 157 

And when the premiere, the first night, the 
production actually arrives, the signal which 
darkens the auditorium and sets the curtain 
in slow motion is like a lever which releases a 
steady, efficient machine. Everywhere each 
tiny part slips into action. There are mem- 
bers who sit in quiet corners, waiting for a 
chance to do some inconspicuous service with 
the same eager keenness that shines on the 
heroine's delicately rouged face. And across 
the wholly eradicated line of the footlights, 
there comes a whisper of sweetness, which is 
the fragrance of fellowship. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Theatrical Renaissance 

The enthusiast and the sluggard are equally 
susceptible to the human failing of impatience : 
the seer of visions, beholding his dream afar 
off, chafes at the stretch between himself and 
his accomplishment : the disbeliever cannot 
look beyond present imperfection. 

The community theatre will suffer both from 
those who believe in it too much and from those 
who have too little faith in its power. As an 
ideal it will satisfy : it offers to the community 
the common interest which is lacking, and to the 
arts of the theatre it offers a permanent home. 
The community will have an interest wide 
enough to include all its members and yet deep 
enough to hold them all. The theatre arts will 
find a place to expand and to grow. 

But the practical application of the ideals of 
democracy to the theatre as an institution 

158 



THE THEATRICAL RENAISSANCE 159 

means very distinct limitations. The ideal is 
not that of a connoisseur : it is the joyous ideal 
of a creator. The art which will be produced 
by a theatre so governed and so manned with 
artists will be the tiny acorn of art from which 
the oak tree will not come except by a process 
of slow growth. 

The working of the community theatre must 
be attended with faith and with no discourage- 
ment. Friction is bound to arise, friction which 
seems about to prevent the accomplishment 
even of the most minor ends. But with faith 
and courage, such friction can be turned into 
power and made to propel the machine. 

It would be madness to expect that because 
a theatre is established in a community, it 
would instantly begin to produce art which 
would rival in beauty and in technique the art 
which has acquired its richness through genera- 
tions of tradition. The first struggles of the 
average community theatre will not compare in 
ease of expression with the theatre as we know 
it. They will be fantastic and often grotesque 
to a trained eye and ear. But if they have a 
sincere foundation and if they cling to their 



160 THE COMMUNITY THEATRE 

naivete, there is no limit to be put upon their 
ultimate achievement. 

For this reason, the community theatre 
carries a promise to the theatre as an art, which 
is not equalled, I think, by any other possible 
theatrical ideal. The arts in the theatre are 
given every opportunity. The new forces of 
art which the theatre has so recently been feel- 
ing, are given a twofold reinforcement. The 
community theatre spreads news of them to 
every member of the theatre: it creates an 
audience which not only understands art, but 
which comes clamoring for the gifts of art; 
and it takes away from the theatre the danger 
— the stultification and oblivion — - which 
hangs over it now upon its present commer- 
cial and speculative basis. 

The renaissance of the theatre in our time 
has long since begun to affect us. The stirring 
of fresh life is evident in each new theatrical 
production upon Broadway : it does not neglect 
the smallest stock house in the country. We 
are obliged to acknowledge its existence and 
its vitality; we are glad to recognize that the 
art is assuming control. And how may we 



THE THEATRICAL RENAISSANCE 161 

best help that tremendous achievement to its 
fullest growth ? 

In answer to this question I have submitted 
these outlines for the community theatre, a 
house of play in which events offer to every 
member of a body politic active participation 
in a common interest. It is not to be judged 
as the full-blown flower of art : it is not even a 
bud about to open. Rather it might be called 
the soil — fertile and fragrant — in which the 
seed is to be sown. The infant art of the theatre 
is to be rocked in this cradle. 

And may we not hope that if it has the in- 
terest of the community, the growing taste and 
curiosity of its audience, combined w T ith a 
group of artists whose lives have been freed 
from the canker of distrust and the fester of 
the desire for gain, may we not hope that the 
theatre of the community will, as it develops 
new strength, bring new art forms and new 
vigor into the art of the theatre? This gift 
would be the final achievement towards which 
we must labor in the Theatre of Democracy. 



APPENDIX 1 

The list of theatres which follows will indicate in 
part the variety and vitality of the new theatrical 
enthusiasm. It can do little more. At this moment 
when fresh ventures are being made in untried 
fields every day, such a list must fall far short of 
completeness. In the comment there has been no 
attempt at criticism and no effort to classify either 
the output or the organization. The notes have 
been chiefly compiled from the statement of some 
member of each theatre's staff. 

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 

The Vagabond Players 

Organized in 1916 by Mrs. Nathan and Mr. Sax 
to produce new works by American authors and 
important plays by foreign writers which would not 
otherwise be seen in Baltimore. The theatre is a 
converted barroom (see photograph) seating sixty- 
two people. The organization is supported by sub- 

1 List is alphabetical. 
163 



164 APPENDIX 

scriptions and gives performances twice a week, pre- 
senting three one-act plays a month for five months. 
These plays are selected by a committee of five 
members and acted by casts chosen by trial from all 
interested persons, under the direction of Mrs. 
Nathan and Mr. Sax. All services are given. 

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 

Greek Theatre 

An out-of-door theatre which follows Greek lines 
in its design. Is in close association with the Uni- 
versity of California. Professional performances 
are often given there beside notable productions by 
the students of the university. 

BETHEL, MAINE 

A converted stable which is at the service of all 
the community who wish to join in theatrical work. 
Seats one hundred fifty people and has a comfortable 
stage. Under the direction of Miss Schornle of Cin- 
cinnati, and the patronage of Mr. W. J. Upson. 

BLUE HILL, MAINE 

A private open-air theatrical stage cut out of the 
rock, with the lovely peak of Blue Hill towering 
over it. 



APPENDIX 165 

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 

Toy Theatre 

A group of amateurs who carried on interesting 
experiments in production in a tiny theatre made 
from a stable. When the subscribers grew numerous, 
an attempt was made to build a larger theatre and 
move into it, but the theatre is now occupied by a 
stock company, and the Toy organization no longer 
exists. Founded 1910. Closed 1915. 

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 

Community Theatre 

Organized in 1917 by Henry B. Stillman, for the 
common use, pleasure, and instruction of the com- 
munity. A company of professional actors under 
an experienced director. Aim is to establish a per- 
manent self-supporting repertory company. Sup- 
ported partly by subscribers. 

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 

The 47 Workshop 

Founded in 1914 by Professor George Pierce Baker 
to give a hearing at Harvard University and Radcliff e 
College to any one who has something interesting to 
offer in the theatrical arts. Plays are chosen by Mr. 
Baker with the approval of the Executive Committee, 



166 APPENDIX 

and cast by them from a company of players who 
have been tested in former plays reinforced by less 
experienced actors. The audience consists of people 
deeply interested in the arts of the theatre, willing 
to cooperate with the work, at least financially; 
it is limited to four hundred by the lack of accommo- 
dation: new members are proposed and seconded 
by old ones. The audience is required to send in 
a written criticism of the performance, from which 
the names are removed before submitting them to 
the author and workers. This device proves satis- 
factory and helpful. The theatre is the inadequate 
Idler Theatre of Radcliffe College. 

CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CALIFORNIA 

Forest Theatre Society 

First production in 1910 was due to the efforts of 
literary people in Carmel. The theatre is an outdoor 
one. The society is supported by its members and 
assisted by the business men of the town. Mem- 
bership is unlimited: fee one dollar a year. Under 
the direction of a council of fifteen members who are 
elected annually. This council chooses plays, and the 
director is appointed by them. There are standing 
committees on Plays, Costumes, Finance, Member- 
ship, Programmes, and Publicity. The plays pro- 
duced are original — unacted — in so far as is pos- 
sible, and often written by local playwrights. 



APPENDIX 167 

The production of an annual Children's Play is 
a feature of the programme. 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

The Hull House Players 

The dramatic group of the Hull House Settlement, 
which came originally, Miss Addams tells us in her 
history of Hull House, from the inspiration of the 
Passion Play at Oberammergau. Its audience is 
made up of the settlement people and of interested 
outsiders; the company is chiefly of the neighbor- 
hood, under the direction of Laura Dainty Pel- 
ham. Has produced many interesting sociological 
plays. 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

The Little Theatre 

Founded 1909. Has produced every kind of play 
under the direction of Mr. Maurice Browne. Has 
lately received an endowment. 

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

The Players Workshop 

An experimental theatre where ideas may be 
worked out in practice. It gives plays by Chicago 
writers only, and nothing but first productions. 



168 APPENDIX 

Each programme is played for six nights in one week. 
The settings and costumes are designed and made in 
the studio of the organization. 

CINCINNATI, OHIO 

Little Playhouse Company 

Founded by Mrs. Helen Schuster-Martin. Pro- 
duces unusualplays. Seeks to become a community 
venture. Company is part professional, on nominal 
salaries. 

CONTOOCOOK, NEW HAMPSHIRE 

The Putney Hill Improvement Society, organized 
for the betterment of rural conditions, has a theatri- 
cal department. The theatre is a converted disused 
schoolhouse which holds one hundred twenty-five 
people. A committee is chosen to manage each pro- 
duction. 

DETROIT, MICHIGAN 

Arts and Crafts Theatre 

Has just finished its first season — an artistic 
achievement of note, under the direction of Mr. 
Sam Hume. Subscribers, who are represented in 
the management by an advisory committee, support 
it. Its purpose is defined as "entertainment and 
art" but it seeks to express the spirit of the locality 
by producing plays written there. 



APPENDIX 169 

FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA 

Little Country Theatre 

An organization of amateurs under the leadership 
of Mr. Alfred Arvold and connected closely with the 
extension work of the Agricultural College. It gives, 
among other plays, those of pioneer life which are 
most suited to the country audiences for which it is 
organized. The company shifts from one commu- 
nity to another. A department of dramatic literature 
is also part of the work, and there is a valuable loan 
dramatic library. The theatre is a remodelled 
chapel. The effects have spread to South Dakota, 
Montana and Iowa. 

GALESBURG, ILLINOIS 

Little Prairie Playhouse 

During the past season has produced monthly 
programmes of long and short plays of a serious 
nature, among them an original play by the 
director, Mr. J. A. Crafton. 

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 

Little Theatre Society of Indiana 

Organized in February, 1915, at the suggestion of 
Professor William Jenkins. Affiliated with the local 
Drama League. Has no theatre. Work of an ex- 



170 APPENDIX 

perimental nature, not always under a professional 
director. Objects are "the experimental and reper- 
tory presentation of both approved and untried 
dramatic works, and the development of the re- 
sources of the community in the creation and in- 
terpretation of vital and artistic plays." Member- 
ship of three classes by which association is chiefly 
financed. But performances are open to the public, 
and the players need not be members of the society. 
(The coming season may see a limitation of this 
policy.) 

LAKE FOREST, ILLINOIS 

Lake Forest Players 

Organized by Mrs. Arthur Aldis for the pleasure 
of the players and their friends, as an experiment 
and an adventure. The theatre is a converted 
wooden house. In its seventh season, which 
covers the summer months. 

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 

Little Theatre 

Control was assumed in 1916 by Miss Aline 
Barnsdall and the Players Producing Company. 
Mr. Richard Ordynski made several productions 
during the season 1916-1917. The theatre will 
reopen in 1917-1918 under the Player Producing 
Company. 



APPENDIX 171 

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN, 

The Little Theatre of Milwaukee 

Founded in 1912 to provide good dramatic fare 
for Milwaukee, and in its present policy aims to 
follow the New Free Folk Stage in Berlin. Theatre 
seats one hundred fifty. Membership unlimited; 
dues three dollars a year. Conducts an open-air 
theatre in summer, and opens its doors to all Chil- 
dren's Players beside giving plays for children. 
The director-producer is assisted by an advisory 
board of prominent persons. Plays are acted by 
amateurs : services are all given. Under the direc- 
tion of Mrs. Edith Adams Stewart. 

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN 

The Wisconsin Players 

Organized as the Wisconsin Dramatic Society and 
Players with a purpose akin to that of the Abbey 
Theatre in Dublin. Two years ago it abandoned 
its branch in Madison, which had formed an "ex- 
change company" up to that time. Has a theatre, 
conducts a workshop to encourage experiment in 
the arts of the theatre. Membership open to all who 
are interested. Dues include all the activities of the 
society. Non-members admitted to plays. Origi- 
nally under the direction of Mr. Thomas Dickinson, 
now directed by Mrs. Laura Sherry. 



m APPENDIX 

MONTCLAIR, NEW JERSEY 

Montclair Players 

Open to the entire community. Dues fifty cents 
a year : tickets for individual performances sell at 
twenty-five cents. Players chosen from the com- 
munity by competition. Direction and production 
by members. Executive Committee select plays. 
High School used as theatre. First season has 
roused great enthusiasm. 

MOUNT TAMALPAIS, CALIFORNIA 

The Mountain Play 

Founded in 1913, since which time there have been 
annual productions. The original owner, Mr. Wil- 
liam Kent, deeded the amphitheatre to the trustees 
to be held forever for The Mountain Play. Visitors 
are urged to spend the day upon the Mountain, and 
thousands take advantage of the invitation every 
year. The earliest play was acted by students from 
the University of California. 

NEW YORK CITY 

Bramhall Platers 

A professional company under the direction of 
Mr. Butler Davenport, who is the author of some 
of their plays as well. Opened in 1916. 



APPENDIX 173 

NEW YORK CITY 

Community Chorus 

Organized by Harry Barnhart, Director, January 
6, 1916. Has sung every week since its organization 
and has invited everybody freely to sing with it. 
Holds "Sings" in Central Park every Sunday after- 
noon with from five to ten thousand persons present, 
besides producing such choruses as Handel's Messiah 
and Haydn's Creation with from one to two thousand 
voices. 

(Not a Theatre, yet important to the Theatre.) 

NEW YORK CITY 

The Grammercy Players 

An organization announced to open in 1917-1918, 
under the direction of Mr. Edwin Hopkins. 

NEW YORK CITY 

Greenwich Village Theatre 

Announced. 

"No set policy will be adhered to regarding the 
length of plays presented . . . plays by the more 
important European dramatists . . . particular at- 
tention to the younger American playwrights . . . 
an occasional classical play revived. A company of 
professionals who are amateurs in the sense that 



174 APPENDIX 

they love acting as an art and are willing to forsake 
the commercial theatre with its long runs and set 
methods in order to do good work." 

(From the Advance Announcement) 

Is to include also Sunday evening concerts and will 
present to the public unusual artists — musicians 
and dancers — some of a type whose art would be 
lost in a large concert hall. 

Another activity is to be "conferences" — not 
stereotyped lectures, but talks in which the audience 
takes part. Besides, it plans to hold art exhibitions 
so that younger men may be given a chance to 
exhibit. 

NEW YORK CITY 

The Marionette Theatre 

A fairy tale theatre for children which has its head- 
quarters at Richmond Hill House, 28 Macdougal 
Street, under the direction of Remo Bufano. 

NEW YORK CITY 

MORNINGSIDE PLAYERS 

Organized in the season 1916-1917 by Mr. Hatcher 
Hughes of Columbia University together with several 
of his pupils. Includes Mr. Clayton Hamilton and 
Mr. Barrett Clark on its executive force. The 
membership is not limited to those interested people 
who are actually connected with the University . . . 



APPENDIX 175 

any one offering his services as actor, manager, 
playwright, or producer is eligible. The two pro- 
ductions last season were made in the Comedy 
Theatre : the organization has no home and no spe- 
cific audience. 

NEW YORK CITY 

Neighborhood Playhouse 

The developed dramatic classes of the Henry 
Street Settlement beautifully housed in the theatre 
which was the gift of the Misses Lewisohn. Pro- 
duces Jewish Festival Plays, short and long plays of 
every description, and is constantly responsible for 
the introduction of good professional companies to 
Grand Street. The artistic staff is an excellent one 
and the resident actors skilled amateurs. Its work 
is constantly varied and interesting. The manage- 
ment of the theatre is in the hands of a board of 
management : the audience is primarily drawn from 
the neighborhood of the Lower East Side; but all 
New York wanders in from time to time. 

The theatre was built in 1914 : before that time 
productions had been made in a near-by hall. 

NEW YORK CITY 

The Playhouse 

In 1915-1916 Miss Grace George established a 
repertory company in The Playhouse, producing a 



176 APPENDIX 

new play every month in the face of the continued 
success of each new 'production, which would have 
enabled a lazy manager to fall into the "long run" 
habit. The announcement has just been made 
that the theatre is to be reopened for the season 
1917-1918. 

NEW YORK CITY 

Portmanteau Theatre 

(Not in the strict sense a social theatre, since it 
does not limit itself in any way by direct connection 
with any audience; it is, however, of vital importance 
because its ingenuity and its simplicity may lead to 
the accomplishment of almost any ends.) 

Mr. Stuart Walker's complete theatrical stage, 
which can go to the ends of the earth at a moment's 
notice. It requires a room sixteen and one half 
feet high, twenty feet long, and forty feet wide. 
The company is a repertory company made up of 
talented young professional actors who regard 
acting as an art. The artistic staff is unusually 
gifted and efficient. 

NEW YORK CITY 

Provincetown Players 

Called "The Playwrights' Theatre." An experi- 
mental theatre which began at Provincetown, Mass- 
achusetts, when a group of authors interested in 



APPENDIX 177 

dramatic writing gathered there for two consecutive 
summers. In the summer of 1915 this group made 
their first productions. In 1916 they moved into the 
Wharf Theatre. In the winter of 1916 the first New 
York productions were undertaken. Tickets are 
sold only to subscribers, and the membership is so 
much in demand that many season-subscribers were 
refused last year. Plays are written and produced 
by the active members : services are free with the ex- 
ception of two officers who give all their time to the 
management. 

NEW YORK CITY 

Washington Square Players 

Originally a group of interested non-professional 
people who began acting for their own amusement 
and have progressed to the Bandbox Theatre for a 
muchtalked-of season (1915-1916) and have followed 
it by meeting Broadway upon its own ground in the 
Comedy Theatre (1916-1917). They have done 
many interesting and some startling plays. 

NEW YORK CITY 

The Theatre Workshop 

Organized in November, 1916, for the purpose of 
centralizing the various creative interests of the 
theatre for their mutual inspiration and for the 
non-commercial enlargement of their opportunities. 



178 APPENDIX 

Has among its departments, Playfinding Committee, 
Associate Players, Production Department, Stars 
and Directors, and an Extension by which plays 
may be sent with good casts to schools or towns 
desiring them. Depends upon subscription for 
support. 

NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS 

Northampton Players 

A professional company which is somewhat re- 
sponsible to the town for the success or failure of its 
productions. Organized in 1910. Under the direc- 
tion of Mr. Bertram Harrison. 

ORANGE, NEW JERSEY 

Blythelea Players 

An amateur organization following the lines of a 
club, which has a theatre in Llewellyn Park on the 
estate of Mrs. C. C. Goodrich. The theatre is 
remodelled from a stable and carriage house, and is 
furnished with many conveniences such as a dome 
for lighting and an otherwise adequately equipped 
stage. Plays are produced for members and their 
guests, and then are repeated for some charity. 
The work is all voluntary and is under the di- 
rection of Mr. Howard Greenley, the architect of 
the theatre. 



APPENDIX 179 

PETERBOROUGH, NEW HAMPSHIRE 

The Edward MacDowell Memorial Society has 
made a habit, since the year 1911, of producing a 
Festival upon a beautiful outdoor stage on the 
MacDowell estate. The colony of artists which 
assembles there for the summer has given its services, 
and the village has an excellent choral organization. 
Mrs. Edward MacDowell is the moving spirit of the 
group. 

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA 

Pittsburgh Theatre Association 

In its first season. Hopes to develop into a per- 
manent art theatre. Under the direction of Mr. 
Thomas H. Dickinson. 

PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS 

Pittsfield Theatre 

A stock company which is supported by interested 
townspeople who own stock and control the policy 
to this extent. 

PLAINFIELD, VERMONT 

Village Theatre 

The stage of the Town Hall, reconstructed by the 
cooperative effort of the selectmen and Mr. Howard 



180 APPENDIX 

Hart, is used for frequent village entertainments 
and for productions by the summer visitors as well. 
Has a curtain painted by Mr. Maxfield Parrish. 

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK 

The Little Theatre 

Founded under the auspices of the Drama League. 
Audience unlimited by membership. Produces one- 
act plays of every variety with amateur casts drawn 
from a group of about one hundred members whose 
services are given. Play-reading committee of three 
chooses plays. First season. 

SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI 

Little Playhouse Company 

Productions limited by the stage of the Artist's 
Guild Theatre. Audience limited to members of 
society. Has subscription list so large that actors 
and stage hands have been paid from the first. 
Policy for next season undetermined, as it is changing 
directors. Has been under the direction of Doctor 
Masseck. 

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA 

The Little Theatre 

Incorporated in February, 1917. Composed of 
one hundred active and forty associate members. 



APPENDIX 181 

Under the direction of eleven corporate directors. 
Is the outcome of the production of two plays, and 
expects during the next season to produce one 
programme a month, under the direction of a pro- 
fessional coach. Casts are composed of amateurs. 
There is no theatre as yet, but negotiations have 
been made to remodel an abandoned church de- 
signed by Cass Gilbert. 

UNIVERSITY, NORTH DAKOTA 

Sock and Buskin Society 

"Little Playhouse" 

"Bankside" 

A dramatic laboratory under Mr. Frederick 
H. Koch of the Department of English. Member- 
ship limited to forty and based upon competi- 
tive trials. Programmes carefully planned in co- 
operation with the Department of English. Has 
two theatres — The Little Playhouse and The 
Bankside, an outdoor theatre with a stream flow- 
ing between stage and audience. Has been doing 
constructive work for twelve years. Under Mr. 
Koch's direction has produced two pageants (Pag- 
eants of the Northwest, 1912, and Shakespeare the 
Playmaker, 1916) which are unique in that they 
were written by a class of twenty students in col- 
laboration. 



182 APPENDIX 

WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Drama League Players 

Organized 1916-1917. Supported by subscrip- 
tion, but audience not limited to subscribers. Plays 
chosen by a committee of the Drama League. Will- 
ingness to serve the only qualification for mem- 
bership. Services given. Uses a normal school as 
a theatre. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. 

Sylvan Theatre 

An out-of-door stage and auditorium (see photo- 
graphs) built and to be maintained by the War De- 
partment in its administration of the Park system 
of the District of Columbia. May be used for any 
performance or play which has the approval of the 
Office of Public Buildings and Grounds. Plan 
contains seats for five thousand but only twenty- 
eight hundred were used at the initial performance : 
these seats are arranged with no cross aisles, so that 
the view is unobstructed. The acoustics are said 
to be good. The United States supports the stage , 
including such details as lighting, policing, and the 
management of tickets. Other expense falls upon 
the company giving the production. 



APPENDIX 183 

NOTES 

The author's information in regard to the theatres 
in the following cities is limited to hearsay accounts 
of their existence, as letters directed to their manage- 
ments have unfortunately failed to elicit response, — 

Bartlesville, Oklahoma. 

Cleveland, Ohio. 

Evans ton, Illinois. * 

Louisville, Kentucky. 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

CALIBAN 

Since these chapters went to press there has been 
a new production of a remodelled Caliban in the Har- 
vard Stadium. Naturally great strides have been 
made in the technique of the new art of which Call- 
ban is the exponent. In the perfect circle made by 
stage and audience, practically all the text was 
heard. The mechanical device was elaborated, a 
steam curtain which hid the inner stage added ma- 
terially to the sense of illusion, and such old theatri- 
cal tricks as the trapdoor were employed with the 
most telling results. But the community spirit was 
once more of most importance. Behind the scenes 
it was vividly alive, just as it had been in New York 
a year ago: "out front" it seemed more vital. It 
may be that the recent declaration of war, and the 



184 APPENDIX 

fresh passages in the play which seemed to touch 
that declaration, had put the spectators in a receptive 
mood. At any rate, the Community Drama (for Mr. 
MacKaye has avoided the critics by changing the 
name of his erstwhile masque) rolled up fresh enthu- 
siasm with each passing day until performances long 
exceeded the advertized number. If some force in 
the community had been at work for months before 
the rehearsals organizing and advancing this very 
enthusiasm, the giant task to which Miss MacKaye, 
Mr. MacKaye, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Brown bent them- 
selves (with the help of thousands) would have been 
much simpler. As it is, Caliban was so filled with 
beauty and the promise of beauty that we may well 
say, with the pale-faced shopgirl who followed me 
down the Stadium steps, in the face of war and in the 
face of sacrifice, "Ain't it wonderful to be livin' 
now?" 

OBERAMMERGAU 

The war has swept through Oberammergau. Miss 
Madeline Doty tells in an article in a recent Atlantic 
of how she found privation and unhappiness in the 
village when she visited it some months ago. And 
now Anton Lang, the Christus loved of thousands, of 
the delicate body and spiritual face, must experience 
the reality of Golgotha: the drink of vinegar and 
gall is set to his lips : he is to descend into actual 
service in the German army. How many times, I 



APPENDIX 185 

wonder, has he prayed before the altar in the moun- 
tain Church, murmuring in words familiar the peti- 
tion that the cup might pass from him ? The cruci- 
fixion which he has suffered in spirit has come to 
him, and with him, to all his neighbors. We cannot 
be amazed that the Oberammergauers are broken- 
hearted and that in their discouragement they despair 
of mending their exquisite fabric. But whatever 
ancient traditions of beauty may be snapped by the 
war, surely, when it is over, Oberammergau will re- 
turn to its greatest joy. And because the spirit of 
the Passion Play has spread across the sea to us, 
because we are beginning to realize the strength of 
Community Drama, it may fall to us as a duty to 
help restore the actuality to that little village. 

REFERENCES 
Playgrounds. 

Chubb, Percival, & Associates: "Festivals and Plays 

in Schools and Elsewhere." Harper, 1912. 

An illuminating book, filled with suggestions for the 

celebration of special occasions. 
Curtis, Henry S. : "Education through Play." Mac- 

millan, 1914. 

Addressed to those who are interested in play as an 

educational factor. 

"The Practical Conduct of Play." Macmillan, 

1915. 

An excellent text-book: gives aims and spirit as 

well as methods. 



186 APPENDIX 

Froebel, F. W. A. : "Menschenerziehung." 1826. 

A discussion of the child, largely before seven 
years. 

Lee, Joseph: "Constructive and Preventive Philos- 
ophy.' 5 New York, 1902. 

"Play and Playgrounds." Boston, 1906. Pam- 
phlet for practical uses. 

Leland, Arthur, and Leland, Lorna. "Playground 
Technique and Play craft." Basette, 1909. 
Contains an excellent short sketch of the philosophy 
of play. 

Pageants 
Beegle, Mary Porter, and Crawford, J. : " Community 

Drama and Pageantry." Yale University Press, 

1916. 

Has a bibliography of pageantry which will prove 

valuable to the organizers of pageants. Also directs 

the pageant from its beginning. 
Davol, R. : "Handbook of American Pageantry.'* 

Taunton. 

A review of the new pageantry in America. 
Bulletins of the American Pageant Association. 

Give lists of pageants as they are produced from 

time to time, and discuss questions of interest to the 

producers of pageants. 

Oberammergau, the Passion Play 

Burton, Lady Isabel. 

An emotional account by an ardent Roman Catholic. 
Blondel, Georges : "Le Drame De La Passion." Paris, 

1900. 



APPENDIX 187 

Jackson, John P. : "The Oberammergau Passion Play." 
London, 1880. 
Account of stage, setting, and procedure. 

Mallory, Gerald: "The Passion Play at Oberam- 
mergau." Boston, 1872. 

Moses, Montrose J.: "The Passion Play of Oberam- 
mergau." Duffield, 1909. 

A translation of the text as well as an historical 
resume and short critical discussion of the origin of 
the play's form. 

Stead, William : "The Passion Play at Oberammergau." 
Stead, London, 1910. 

A careful account written in Oberammergau. 
Contains emotional reaction as well as good pic- 
tures. 

State Establishment of Theatres 

Archer, William, and Barker, Granville: "Schemes 
and Estimates for a National Theatre." Duffield. 
A treatment of the National Theatre from an 
English point of view, which contains practical 
discussions of value to the organizer. The duties 
of various staff members are treated at length and 
lists of plays are suggested for the Stock or Reper- 
tory Company. 

MacKaye, Percy: "Caliban by the Yellow Sands." 
Doubleday, Page, 1916. 

The text of the Shakespeare Tercentenary Masque, 
with an account of the methods employed in its 
production. 

"The Civic Theatre." Kennerley, 1912. 
A collection of valuable and inspiring sketches. 



188 APPENDIX 

"The Masque of Saint Louis." 

Text of the masque produced in Saint Louis as a 

civic venture. 

"Substitute for War." Macmillan, 1915. 

A cry for beauty in service. 

"Report of Committees of the Saint Louis 

Masque." 

An illuminating account of a city working together 

for civic betterment and enjoyment. 

The New Theatre 

Craig, Edward Gordon: "On the Art of the Theatre." 
Chicago, 1912. 

Filled with the voice of prophecy : most inspiring 
to the artist of the theatre. 

Carter, Huntley : "The New Spirit in Drama and Art." 
London. 

An account of changes in the Continental Theatre 
and in England. 

Cheney, Sheldon: "The New Movement in the 
Theatre." M. Kennerley. 
Delightfully clear account of the new art ideals. 

ModerweU, H. K. : "The Theatre of To-day." Lane, 
1914. 

An able summing up of the forces at work in the 
new theatre. 

Gregory, Lady Augusta: "Our Irish Theatre." Put- 
nam. 

The aims and methods of the Irish Theatre move- 
ment set forth in an interesting and readable fashion. 



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